Tears of Relief

A wave of relief rolled over me with such force it spilled out my eye in the form of a tears. All of the emo­tions that came with 9 months of pain, agony, and finally progress rushed back to me as I exited the office build­ing of my back doc­tor, head high with no pain.

I had gone in to my six-month post-op a lit­tle wor­ried about some recent back and leg pain I had been expe­ri­enc­ing. Hear­ing my back doc­tor say this was nor­mal and noth­ing to worry about was such good news. Even bet­ter was hear­ing him exclaim after exam­in­ing my mus­cle strength and move­ment that he no longer needed to see me.

The doc­tor also said I should stretch for­ward some to help increase flex­i­bil­ity and work out some scar tis­sue that was sure to remain in my lower back. I had actu­ally thought I’d never be able to bend over again. It felt so good know­ing that I did have a good chance of return­ing to a com­pletely nor­mal life!

As I left the doctor’s office and headed down the hall­way I saw myself nine months ago. I was hob­bling into the build­ing, a pained look on my face. It was not a pretty site. As I remem­bered the whole ordeal of the past nine months – the numer­ous cor­ti­sone shots, hours spent in bed, surgery, phys­i­cal ther­apy – I real­ized that even through the pain there had always been hope. At times this pilot light of hope was all I had burn­ing within me. But it was enough to help fire up into a strong desire to run again once I found the gas switch.

Sure, there were moments – many, actu­ally – when I won­dered if it all would ever end. But deep down I think I knew that a big­ger prob­lem than my her­ni­ated disc would come from giv­ing up. I had to keep my eyes on a vision of once again run­ning. I had to keep my quest alive.

As I opened the door to the doctor’s build­ing and walked out into the warm sun­shine I was brought back to the present. The con­trast between months of suf­fer­ing, uncer­tainty, and hard work made for a sharp con­trast with my cur­rent pain-free walk­ing at that moment. Tears of relief welled up as I real­ized I had just past the mile­stone that seemed almost impos­si­ble to reach. While I’m cer­tainly not out of the woods yet – I’ve still got another six months of recov­ery to go – I’ve come a long way.

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