Proving People Wrong

Part Two of an Interview with Fellow TBI Recoverer, Johanna O’Connor – Her Sporting Achievements

This post obviously follows on from Part One of Johanna’s interview.

Johanna, can I now ask about how you returned to competitive sport?

After the accident, the doctors had said to me, with the damage I had to my shoulder and knees, I would not be able to swim or run again. After a month of being out of hospital, I went down to the pool- mainly to get me out of the house and stop me from going crazy. I started aqua jogging in the pool and cycling (on a simulator) to strength my legs.

Three months after the accident, I visited a knee surgeon. He explained to me that he could not operate yet as my legs where not strong enough, but he also made the fatal mistake of explaining to me that 'I could do no more damage than I already had done, so go out there and make the most of it'. This statement stuck with me. I also had time while I was sitting around, to think about what I had lost. I felt as though I had lost basically everything that I knew; my studies, my sport, my partner, my life.

So the very next day after seeing the surgeon I started training again (swimming, board paddling, and running) mainly for Surf Lifesaving competitions. I had previously been a pool swimmer doing 11+ pool sessions a week and had had an interest in Surf Lifesaving. That interest started just before I turned 19 when I was asked to compete at a New Zealand regional competition and after this competition was asked to be part of the New Zealand development squad. From there I socially competed in Surf Lifesaving. In February 2003, about six months before my accident, I was part of the NZ Under-23 team to represent New Zealand at the Tri Nations [Ed's note: This name refers to an event between the nations of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa]. This was my first NZ representative team.

What has your progress in the sport been like since your accident?

I trained hard and eight months after my accident was the trials for World Surf Lifesaving Championships, to be held in Italy in September 2004. At the New Zealand trials, I was the best performing woman. During those eight months, I had switched everything else in my life off and trained hard. Training is how I dealt with my emotional distress. It led to more physical pain, but dealing with that made me train harder still. It all definitely helped me to sleep at night without going through the hours of emotional distress of what life used to be like and the emotions of losing the first guy I ever loved.

I was named on the team to go to the World’s. My main event was the Surf Swim. I gained fourth place. At the time I was extremely disappointed about that, I only wanted first place. [Ed’s Note: Johanna may have been disappointed, but the rest of us are in awe of fourth place! This was, after all, the World Championships and it was less than twelve months after doctors had told her she would never swim again!]

Looking back on all I went through to get fourth place, though, I can honestly say I came a long way. I am happy with this thought, but now it has created the hunger in me to get that first place. Since then I have continued to perform and have now been on 8 New Zealand Representative teams. [Ed’s Note: Johanna most recently competed as part of the twelve-strong New Zealand team at the International Surf Challenge in Sydney, Australia in December, 2007.]

Your training must have been so difficult, especially at the beginning. What kept you going?

What started me off was depression!! I had lost everything I knew, I didn't get to go to my partner’s funeral, I was stuck on the couch with ankle to thigh leg braces on, I couldn't go anywhere. My life for the first few weeks of being at home was my room, bathroom, and lounge/kitchen. After sitting around for so long I was uncomfortable at how my body was changing- I used to be a thin, athletic person, and I was turning into (as my friend put it) a normal looking girl. All the things I had taken for granted like; standing up by myself, showering myself, and all the others e.g driving car, general walking etc. It was horrible - I was relying on other people all the time! I hated this. I wanted to do it when I wanted to and how I wanted to!

The doctors were telling me about not being able to swim or run again hit me hard - real hard. I could not handle it. Then came the knee surgeon’s words, 'You can't do any more damage...’. He also said I probably wouldn't be able to run till Feb, and we were in October. The very next day, I was training with the mentality, "I can't do any more damage". I tried to run and swim again. Swimming was painful. I went from before the accident doing 8-9km in 2hours, to swimming 1km in 40min's for the first week ,which built up to 2km in 1hour in the 2nd week and slowly progressed from there. [Ed’s note: If that swimming pace makes readers feel uncomfortable, I can assure them that, despite training, my own pace has never been anything close to that good! :-)]

Running: wow this was slow! I had no strength (I struggled to walk up stairs) but I slowly got faster over time. At the World’s in 2004, I was even managed to run in the beach running relay.

Training was extremely difficult; the pain was some times so intense. This would be from scar tissue stretching or knees failing on me or the continual shoulder pain or running 2 days after a piece of bone being removed from my hip to reconstruct my face, plus the many other operations I encountered. The pain is indescribable, but for the reasons explained, I pushed through, even though I couldn't walk after some sessions due to my knees giving out. Having a head injury helped me to concentrate on myself and getting myself better.

My head injury damaged my social ability and my reasoning, so I was stubborn, I would not listen to people telling me not to go training. My intolerance made it hard for me to deal with people. When people kept telling me I couldn't do this or that, I hated it I could do it and I would prove to them all that I could. So another reason I was able to push through the pain, was to prove to myself and the people around me that I was no push over, and once I realised I could do it I wanted to prove them all wrong, including myself.

When it comes down to it this was my second chance - the chance Jared never got. I had to make the most of it and get myself right.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Johanna. Best of luck from us here at Howtorecover with your further adventures. We are very sure you will make the most of your second chance! Those readers interesting in hearing more of Johanna's story can start by trying this online newspaper article.

Another Chance at Life, Why Waste It?

Part One of an Interview with Fellow TBI Recoverer, Johanna O’Connor – Her Accident, Recovery and Overall Attitude

Johanna, can you start by telling us about your accident?

Ok, my accident:
I was a 20 year old university student and most of my friends were starting to turn 21. The first of my friends to have his 21st party was a good mate from high school. On 9 August, 2003, Jared, my boyfriend, and I went down to Hamilton for the party. We arrived about 3pm and headed out for a walk down River Road……

My next memory is my mother asking me if I wanted to put my running shoes on, as they had finally found the second shoe. This was on the 20th of August; I had been in an induced coma for 10 days and suffered multiple injuries.

Both Jared and I had been out walking; but, when I woke, I was the only one still alive. We had been hit by a car that swerved off the road and ran into us on the footpath.

Jared had been declared brain dead and was held on life support till his sister arrived back from Scotland. On the 11th August, the life support was turned off. His funeral was held on the 15th August, so I had missed this and still can not bring myself to watch the video of it.

Starting at the bottom of the body up, I dislocated my left knee and lost all the ligaments and cartilage in both knees, fractured my right hand and shoulder, dislocated my right shoulder, and I completely smashed a plate in my face (this is what nearly killed me). I also suffered from intense bleeding on the brain - leaving me with a very bad head injury. For the first 5 days out of my coma, I had no control and no recollection of anything that happened. As my family later explained to me, I was extremely honest and a wee bit crazy (in a funny way).

I was in hospital for three weeks. This was a very short time considering I was to be in the hospital for up to 6 months. My Mum is a nurse and could take care of me, plus I was determined to go home. It helped that I had amazing support from my friends and extended family. I think I ended up with over 100 soft toys and over 100 bunches of flowers. It was amazing!

I guess we should all be so amazed you even managed to survive. Yet you've astounded everyone by performing incredibly well at your sport. We’ll talk more about that in a moment, but can you tell us now about what guided you, overall, in your recovery?

With my head injury, my intolerance and stubbornness came out in a big way. I could not tolerate sitting on the couch, something I have never been used to. I felt as though I was wasting my life away, I had been given another chance at life, why waste it? I had always been a sporty, outdoors sort of person who would try and achieve everything I could. This was the only way I knew how to live.

Most normally, recoveries are about downs as well as ups. What are your regrets? God willing, it won't happen, but what would you do differently if you had your recovery again?

This is a very hard question, regrets..... I don't have any really. I have learned to live without regrets. If I am to look back on my life if I didn't make those mistakes I would not be the person I am today.

There are things, though, that I wish I could have done differently, but I would not call them regrets. I wish I had more control over my head injury and could tolerate things, especially my friends and family.
But I figured out it is always those that care about you the most that will take the time to understand what you are going through and will support you through it all.

The other thing I may change, is how far I pushed myself some days, but in saying that if I didn't push myself that far would I have gotten as far as I have today or got there as quickly I did?? I had to learn my limits and I guess I always tried to exceed them. Some days I would get a little further some days I would not.

You've already done so much amazing stuff already! Where will your recovery take you next?

Where will it take me...... I don't know, I wish to start my own business sometime soon. I want to travel the world (I'm half way there). There are so many things I want to do, I don't think my short life will allow me to achieve everything this world has to offer me. As for my sport, I have many years left in me, I still suffer from my injuries, with a number of operations still to come.

My recovery will be an ongoing thing, something I will always have to deal with. All I need to do is to take things day by day because tomorrow who knows what the world will bring.

The head injury I suffered from is not over, but there is no way I will let it stop me from living life to the fullest.

Part Two of our incredible interview with Johanna relates to her sporting achievements. It continues here.

Focusing on Tomorrow

Just last week, I met a guy living with the effects of motor neuron disease. Working with this disease is quite unlike recovering from a TBI. In many ways, I felt humbled in his presence - he was showing an incredible amount of grit and determination in dealing with his illness. However, I mentioned this blog and my quest to describe finding determination. I was lucky enough to get his and his partner's thoughts about it.

His partner described determination as not worrying about yesterday or today, but focusing on tomorrow. With a focus on tomorrow, why it happened yesterday is much less important - there's no getting caught up thinking about the if only's or blaming anyone or anything. And there's much less reason to worry about the effects of it today - there's no worrying about how one can no longer do what one once did.

Instead, a focus on tomorrow means a focus on how any situation can be improved - how stuff can be done better. Once that's decided, it's made so. Yet tomorrow is always shifting onwards so the game never ends and, while circumstances might change, there is always another day to focus on too.

The man's partner saw this as an accurate description of how he approached his illness. I would also like to think of it as a description of how I approach my TBI. Whether or not it describes my own approach, though, it seems another great way of describing what determination is. Perhaps everyone has a different way of finding determination and my search for describing it will not turn out how I meant it to. But I hope it will, at least, stimulate thinking for other recoverers.

Cheers,
Mike

You Can!

When I started this blog, I decided to focus only on what I had done, not on what I thought others could or should do. It's been easy to keep to that rule, but I'll break it for this one post. Rather than saying, I did this or I did that, for this post, I say, you should think about this. I do so because I see this subject as being one that was critical to my recovery and to the recoveries of many others - the determination to recover ... the determination to still be the best you can be ... the determination to say, I know I have constraints, but I'm going to push them as best I can - this is how I want it to be!

I see determination as distinct from motivation. A number of websites discuss a motivational problem common to TBI called adynamia. This website, for instance, discusses ways of coping with adynamia. I see it that, to be willing to try those ways, a recoverer (or perhaps their loved ones) must first have determination. In that way, determination is broader than motivation.

In my post about kicking down doors, I indicated that my own will to recover, my enjoyment of kicking down doors, came naturally to me. I don't quite know what to say to others to help them find their determination. Perhaps one might think about why they would like to recovery. Do they want to be better fathers, better husbands or just better people?

One thing that I want to make clear, though, is that you can! If Johanna's and my cases indicate anything, it's that you have the power to do your best with what you have after a TBI. And, by doing so, you might well find that what you still have is much larger than what you previously thought.

What happened to you was crap. It might well be that the only positive thing to say about it is, at least it wasn't worse. Now it's up to you to recover from it as best you can!

And you can!

Cheers,
Mike

We Are the Lucky Ones

Thoughts on Recovering from Cancer Survivor, Dave Colligan

It’s difficult to describe the emotions you go through when diagnosed with serious illness. For me, it was more relief than anything else, that I finally knew for sure what was wrong with me. At 23 years old, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes. I had two tumours identified: The primary one, about the size of a closed fist, in my chest and the secondary one, about the size of a plum, in my neck. Hodgkin’s is not hereditary and nobody really knows what causes it.

I actually wasn’t that surprised to hear what my diagnosis was as I’d been sitting around in the hospital while all sorts of tests were conducted, reading the women’s magazines in the various waiting rooms – there’s never anything for the guys to read! I read an article about the Australian singer/actress Delta Goodrem, who also had Hodgkin’s, and I just knew.

The doctors told me that my chances of recovery were pretty good, around 75% in fact, so I almost felt like a fraud when talking to other cancer patients during my chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions as they had typically been told that they had a much slimmer chance than me. The positive outlook that these people displayed under such difficult circumstances was inspiring to say the least

My friends and family reacted in very different ways to my diagnosis. Some people cried, some people were very matter-of-fact – I guess everyone has their own way of dealing with adversity and I tried to help people deal with it as best I could. For me, I just coped by trying to live as normally as possible, and encouraging people to treat me as normally as possible.

I’m usually a fairly active person, but cancer and cancer treatment really saps your energy levels so I passed the time when I had no energy by doing a bit of reading. Two of the books that I read, which will be no surprise to those affected by cancer, were Lance Armstrong’s books It’s Not About The Bike and Every Second Counts. Lance is a very inspiring person himself, but there was one line in particular that I liked which I think Lance attributed to one of the many cancer patients he became friends with:

“We are the lucky ones…”

When people ask me whether I ever think that I was unlucky to get cancer, I always reply that if I had my time again I’d still want to go through what I went through. This is pretty hard for a lot of people to understand, and maybe it takes a ‘life-changing’ event to really understand it, but I really do feel lucky to have had this experience. Sure, chemo’s not much fun, but being faced with the prospect of losing your life puts a lot of things into perspective and highlights what matters to you and what doesn’t. I know it’s a cliché – and a slogan - but life is short and (depending on what you believe) you only have one.

So I reckon it’s good to make the most of it.


Dave

More On the Language I Use to Describe TBI Recovery

The way we talk about things reflects the way we think about and approach them. I want to look a little more at what I think about the language of recovery. Consider these three statements often used by people:

1. "Mike's on the road to recovery";
   
2. "It's taken almost 3 years for me to recover"; or
   
3. "Once I've fully recovered, I'll be able to ... again" (that's one I myself often used in the past).

I talked about a couple of concepts in Recovery Isn't a Destination, It's a Journey! and How Long Does TBI Recovery Take? Now let's look at how I'd reword the above comments:

1. I think it's nice to compare recovery to a road, but it's not a road that has a definite end! What's wrong with just, "Mike's recovering well"?*
2. It's taken three years to recover...enough to do what? Why not be more specific? For example: "It's taken almost 3 years for me to recover enough to run my business well!"
3. When we talk about being able to do stuff again surely it's better for us to continue being specific! How about this? "First, I had to learn to breath properly while exercising. Next, I'll learn to run again. Then hopefully I'll be able to have another go at an Ironman triathlon."

I know the way I talk about my recovery may seem fairly inconsequential. However, at the most basic level, it affects the way I feel about it - it can make me happy or sad, determined or hesitant. For that reason, I think it very important.

Cheers,
Mike

* You might have read my post, My Regrets. Perhaps this sentence should be, "Mike's recovering fairly well!" :-)

How Long Does TBI Recovery Take?

In this post, I described recovery not as a destination, but as a journey. However, that still leaves the question, how long will my journey take? When will I feel 100% of what I used to be? Well, how long is a piece of string? One answer to that last question is, all that matters is what you can do with it. Strangely, that answer fits equally well to the first two questions too.

All that seems important to me is what I am able to do right now. Can I reach the goals I set myself? Am I able to run my own business well? Am I able to have another go at an Ironman triathlon? It's true that my accident has meant some of my goals are different to what they were before. If they were the same, I might not be choosing which doors to kick down properly. Whatever my goals are now, however, they're the ones I'm trying my best to achieve. All that matters to the length of my string is what I can do with it!

Sometimes, it pays to reflect on things like where have I come from since my accident. I was lying in a bed in a coma almost 3 years ago, how am I doing now? Thinking about that can help keep my determination up. Fundamentally, what I reflect on, though, is definitely not am I 100% of what I used to be. It's things like how many doors have I kicked down since my accident. That's all the reflecting that seems important to me.

It might not be clear why this concept is important to me. If you're wondering that, take a read of this post, More On the Language I Use to Describe TBI Recovery.

Cheers,
Mike

Recovery isn't a Destination, It's a Journey!

I see my recovery as a journey, but I need to be clear on this - I don't think it's a journey with any destination or end-point. I don't think I'll suddenly wake up one day in a mythical place called recovery. Instead, I think of my recovery as a road - one that I'm using as I get better. It's twisty and rutted. I have to pay attention to keep safely on my way. So far, though, it's lead all the way from the scene of my accident to right here, at this computer, right now. It runs on, though, and I will keep doing my best to follow it.

You might not see this as important, but think of the language often used when people talk about recovery. I've put together a few common statements, as well as how I'd reword them, here.

Now, if recovery is a journey, there's still the question, how long will mine take? To tackle that question, I've got another post here.

Cheers,
Mike