Living in a Body That Never Gets a Break

At some point, you stop counting injuries by years and start counting them by body parts.

🦿 Learning to Live With Permanent Change

I’ve been living with disability for a long time.

Not the kind people always notice — not immediately, anyway. But the kind that reshapes how you move through the world, how you enter rooms, how you calculate risk before every step.

After a traumatic injury years ago, I lost my left leg above the knee. Mobility became something I had to engineer, not assume. Crutches weren’t optional. They were survival tools.

Necessary.
Relentless.
Unforgiving.

🦾 When the Tools That Save You Start Breaking You Down

Anyone who relies on crutches long-term learns something quickly:

Your shoulders pay the price.

I learned that the hard way.

Years of leaning, lifting, absorbing weight through joints that weren’t designed for it eventually caught up with me. My right shoulder gave out first. Torn rotator cuff. Surgery followed.

The recovery was brutal.

There’s no gentle way to say it — shoulder surgery humbles you. The pain lingers. Sleep becomes awkward. Independence shrinks temporarily.

My surgeon said something that stuck with me:

“There’s nothing worse for shoulders than crutches.”

He wasn’t wrong.

❄️ One Slip, One Second, Another Injury

A few years later, winter added its own chapter.

I came inside after taking the dog out. One crutch was wet from snow. The kitchen floor was slick.

It took less than a second.

The crutch slipped.
I went down.
Instinct kicked in.

I landed on my elbow, and all my weight transferred upward. My left shoulder hyperextended in a way no joint should.

The pain was immediate. Deep. Certain.

I knew something had torn.

🩺 When Therapy Isn’t Healing — Just Hurting

I tried physical therapy.

Six weeks of exercises. Careful movements. Hoping improvement would come.

Instead, the pain worsened.

Every session felt like reopening something that hadn’t closed. Eventually, I stopped — not out of laziness, but because continuing felt like doing harm rather than healing.

Sometimes, persistence isn’t strength.
Sometimes, it’s wisdom to stop.

🧾 Waiting for Answers That Take Too Long

Authorization for imaging didn’t come quickly.

While waiting, I adapted — like disabled people often do. I compensated. I shifted weight. I favored one side.

And, predictably, my “good” shoulder started hurting too.

By the time imaging was approved, both shoulders needed to be scanned.

One injection helped the right side.
The left barely responded.

That difference said a lot.

🧠 When the Body Becomes a Long-Term Project

There’s a strange mental space you enter when you realize your body is never going to be “done.”

There’s always another repair.
Another appointment.
Another plan for after the next procedure.

Upcoming surgeries stacked themselves into a quiet mental queue:

• Shoulder repair
• Abdominal surgery for a recurring hernia
• Foot surgery to prevent breakdown and wounds
• A knee replacement looming somewhere down the road

At some point, the list stops feeling shocking and starts feeling logistical.

😅 Humor as a Survival Skill

People sometimes mistake dark humor for negativity.

It isn’t.

It’s how you survive when seriousness would crush you.

Joking about being held together by hardware.
Laughing about becoming a frequent guest in operating rooms.
Pretending your body is a long-term renovation project.

Humor doesn’t mean you’ve given up.

It means you’ve found a way to keep going without drowning in frustration.

🦴 Pain Is Not Just Physical

Pain doesn’t live only in joints and nerves.

It lives in waiting rooms.
In delayed approvals.
In not knowing when the next intervention will be scheduled.

It lives in planning life around recovery windows instead of vacations.

And it lives in the quiet fear that one more injury could tip the balance.

🧠 The Exhaustion of Always Needing Repairs

There’s a fatigue that comes not from pain itself, but from repetition.

From knowing you’ve healed before — and will have to do it again.

From being grateful for medical advances while also being tired of needing them.

From hearing, “This one will help,” knowing there will likely be another “one” later.

🤍 Choosing Dignity Over Defeat

I don’t see myself as broken.

Worn? Yes.
Reinforced? Also yes.

This body has carried me through service, trauma, recovery, and decades of adaptation. It’s not fragile — it’s been tested.

What I refuse to do is shrink my life in anticipation of decline.

Movement matters.
Independence matters.
Dignity matters.

🌱 What Living Like This Teaches You

Living in a body that keeps demanding attention teaches you a few things:

• resilience isn’t loud
• strength isn’t linear
• humor can coexist with fear
• healing is not a one-time event

Most of all, it teaches you to value function over perfection.

🎉 Still Wishing Others Well

Despite everything — the surgeries, the setbacks, the waiting — I still find myself wishing others well.

Because struggling doesn’t make you bitter by default.

Sometimes, it makes you softer toward other people’s pain.

🧠 Still Here, Still Moving

This body may never stop needing repairs.

But as long as there’s a path forward — even a slow one — I’ll take it.

Because giving up movement isn’t an option.

And neither is giving up on myself.