by 2013 was a year of great tension. I remember being upset about some situations (which, after my accident, were completely left aside) and that I was pursuing some changes.
I had resigned from a job in an institution and was looking for a new possibility that, apparently, was viable, but I needed my degrees and certifications that were on a high shelf in a storage room in my house. I remember feeling pulled (not what generated that sensation, but the sensation itself).
I needed to get up to look for my papers. A few days before I had bought a pair of sandals that I wore for the first time and I only wore it once the day before on a friend’s birthday. I remember looking at my feet a lot that day.perhaps my intuition led me to treasure that image that would soon change in a jump (rather, in a fall).
That Saturday, December 14, my husband, who had gone out, left the folding ladder at hand so I could climb up to get what I needed. The afternoon was falling and I wanted to save time, I was not willing to take a few things out of the storage room that has a kind of step to open and locate the staircase. I decided, then, to put a tin bench that barely fit on its edges on top of a toolbox that was serving as a banquet and I climbed on. In that brief moment of time that I was up, I couldn’t resist the urge to look down from above, perhaps triumphantly, without realizing that just a few seconds later, I was going to fly backwards through the air and end up bruised on the floor.
I knew right away that something was wrong from the way my left ankle looked. Trying to stay calm, I moved with my tail towards a wall looking for support while I called my oldest son to contact my husband and call the medical emergency. We were very scared; Despite everything I tried to stay calm.
I fractured my entire ankle: tibial pilon, tibia and fibula. That night I ended up hospitalized without knowing that I would stay there for several days.until going through an imminent surgery and out of all end-of-year plans.
That was, literally and metaphorically, a great “still point” in my life and that of my family. It meant a long period of waiting, almost a year. Also an opportunity for very significant learning and discoveries.
We lived one (two) fracture year. The end of 2013 and almost all of 2014 were marked by this fracture.
I went through the first surgery knowing that for three months I would not be able to support my left leg. That gray summer, my house was filled with objects and smells that marked a new scenario: wheelchair, crutches, cast, orthopedic boot, borrowed chair to rest, chair for the bathtub, bedpan, gauze, disinfectants, creams, painkillers, injections . . At that time we all entered a new routine. I needed both physical support for each trip, as well as emotional support for the different emotions that I went through.
I was angry with myself for a long time, feeling helplessness, anger, pain. and a deep sadness that over time I learned to make room for and, little by little, to accept.
I began my kinesiology rehabilitation at the same time knowing, although I didn’t even want to think about it, that a new surgery would come in a few months.
At that time, my almost fourteen-year-old daughter, who already managed with a certain autonomy on the street, began to travel alone, she needed to do so and I could not accompany her. She then drew plans for her and monitored her from a distance so she could move. She rewarded me handsomely, encouraging me with equal ease and courage to apply cream to the recent seams on my operated leg.
My youngest son, eight years old at the time, was playing a very particular game on the computer. That of Isaac, an overwhelming child pursued by his sinister mother, from whom he was trying to escape. Of all the drawings of him in particular he drew this game and there appeared the supposed terrified Isaac trying to escape under the creepy and gigantic leg of his mother… (I reminded him these days, he got excited and found one of those drawings ). It is likely that He would try to recreate his own fears in that and many others in this particular situation.. My operated leg occupied a big place in her life and in ours.
My oldest son, at the time eighteen years old, maintained (although somewhat more attenuated) his position as a confrontational and angry teenager. However, every time he went out for a walk, he came scented and kissed me, in an unexpected gesture of tenderness at first, which later became a habit.
My husband became a juggler. He took care of his work, of a large part of the housework, he took me and brought me to and from the miles of consultations carrying a wheelchair, crutches and whatever else was necessary, he prepared my breakfast, he took care of my medications, that I ate as delicious as possible while he was at home and as much as I could eat, which at times was endless. In all of that was, as he told me, his love. I also received help from my parents, especially my mother who She was a great provider of meals and a very present cook in my house.
Towards the middle of the year came the second and inevitable surgery. The first, according to Dr. Gregorio Fiks (that great, half-angry surgeon whom I became fond of over time), had been to fix what was broken and put it back together, and the second to improve the mobility of the ankle and foot, which were still not well. . and that he checked very often, meticulously (spoiler alert: in the end I walked perfectly).
This time I arrived in better condition because I was able to prepare. Now we knew that the recovery was going to be shorter and that in just forty-five days he would be able to begin to support his foot. Also, that everything I moved forward was going to be to get closer and closer to the desired final stretch of this long process.
In that interim too, I started working on a new project at the institution I hadn’t finished leaving. and as, little by little, I was able to start moving around, I began to travel in taxis to go to work and also to my therapy.
Walking was THE challenge. Stand up, take the first steps first with two crutches, then with one, then with a cane and finally after a long time, with nothing but my own feet.
Walk. Walk… Learn and relearn to walk… I dreamed of walking… I walked, walked and walked…
On this tour I also had great friends nearby who accompanied me. They visited me, pampered me, texted, brought books, delicious things to eat and also one of them (who knows who she is but not the name) took me to the street arm in arm to take my first new steps.
Finally, 2014 was reaching December and this cycle was beginning to close. By then, after a long rehabilitation, exercises and effort, she was already walking using a cane. This way I felt safer and at the same time considered by people, especially on the street.
The cane was my support for a long time until I was also able to put it down. Despite the great improvement, many of my fears were still there. To hit me, to fall, to pain.
Precisely, from the hand of my clinical doctor I learned to stop taking the medication for that pain, little by little, drop by drop, until I didn’t take any more.
This is how I discovered that physical pain sometimes occupies more space in our heads than in the rest of the body. Such is his presence that he is feared. However – this time for me – the possibility of accepting it and knowing that perhaps it could appear if I was warned, was, in some way, liberated.
In December of that year, my family and I traveled abroad for a family celebration. And at that party with low shoes and great care I was able to dance my first new steps from that stage. Furthermore, that December 31st I welcomed 2015 with my twelve nails (which I still have in my left ankle) dancing on a little train at my older brother’s house. Against all odds, a year that starts badly doesn’t always end the same way!
Ten years have recently passed since this accident. In a somewhat particular year crossed by changes in cycles, new beginnings and some breaks, I felt the need to testify to that time that left its marks in the entire dimension of the word.
As a psychopedagogist that I am, I cannot help but Reflect on the learnings that this accident left me.
Accident? Without a doubt. I didn’t realize that I could fall, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten on that way… However, not having done things differently made me see that I was reckless and from that recklessness I learned something. Could I have avoided it? Maybe, although I had no intention at the time, to do things differently. My actions also led me to think about this: sometimes we simply do not want, we are not willing to take “time to”….. (everyone can complete their own thing here)
Could it be those “times not granted” that later do the same, imposing themselves on us without leaving us a choice?
That life sometimes offers us “spaces of time” for which, inevitably, we must make room.
That there are difficult moments, of fracture, to name them in some way, that test us and we are faced with our most absolute fragility, although also, in this vulnerability we can discover our strengths that give us the opportunity for new beginnings.
I learned that there are minimal situations of a different daily life that, although they seem hard and still crossed by pain, deserve to be rescued because they are a source of learning (for example: giving an injection daily).
I learned again at that moment, from there, to walk.
For me, walking is also about getting moving, it is then dancing, expanding, expanding horizons, knowing, discovering, finding and learning with each step.
An eternal walker. That’s soy.
Mariela Jacubowicz. Graduate in Psychopedagogy. Hospitals, programs to protect the rights of children and adolescents, and school inclusion education are used. She currently works on school counseling teams and in the office. She likes to write about education and as a means of self-knowledge, especially for the simple pleasure of writing. Married. Proud mother of her three children (who, they say, share her mother’s love with her plants). In her free time, she loves walking outdoors, dancing, getting together, “weaving plots” with friends, reading, studying, going to the movies and, obviously, taking care of her plants.
