Getting Used to Anything

This past July in the midst of a bunch of other stuff going on in my life (ask me about it sometime), I tripped and fell breaking the fifth metatarsal in my left foot. It was an uninteresting incident. I walked out onto the back porch to check the salmon I had on the grill and my foot caught on the one step down and I fell forward twisting and breaking my foot under me. It was the first time in my 62 years that I broken a bone.

I tried to pretend it was ok but by the next morning it was swollen and painful and clear that it needed attention. Barb drove me to the Urgent Care Clinic where, after making sure I had insurance, they x-rayed it and confirmed the break. They put me in a boot and told me to contact an orthopedist for further care.

I was near despair. I hate to sound like a baby but my primary exercise is walking. At the time, I was walking two hours a day. This break was really going to mess up my life. It was very painful to walk on even with the boot. I tried using crutches and not putting any weight on the foot but that is not easy to do, as you may or may not know.

A few days later, I saw the orthopedist. By then, I was hobbling around pretty well. The pain was mostly gone, and I was able to resume most activities around the house. Going downstairs to the basement was challenging but I was managing better than I had imagined I could just days earlier.

NP Lee looked at my x-ray and then turned to me. “I am sorry this happened, man,” he said. “How are you doing with this?” he asked with genuine concern pointing at the boot.

“It’s amazing what you can get used to,” I replied.

He paused in thought for a moment, looked deep into my eyes and said, “that’s true” in a way that made me believe that he had had to get used to a thing or two in his life.

The good news, he told me, is that I didn’t need a cast or surgery. The boot would do as long as I wore it all the time except when bathing or sleeping.

Over the next few weeks I adapted. I couldn’t drive our Civic, which has a clutch, but I could drive the minivan just fine. I could clomp around the grocery store and do the shopping. I could even go for shorter walks around the meadow right near home. In short, with a few exceptions, my life carried on fairly similarly to what it was before the break.

Six to eight weeks sounded like a long time, but it went by quickly and a day came in September that Mr. Lee told me that I didn’t have to wear the boot any longer. Complete healing would take a long time but as long as I was careful, I could go back to wearing a complete pair of shoes.

The first day or two without the boot were strange! Even though there was no pain, it felt weird to walk without it. I limped though there was no need to. I just felt odd to walk without the boot, I had gotten so used to it.

A few days later I was walking normally again.

Change comes when we least expect it. It is rarely welcome. It brings stress, challenge, even despair. But the human ability to adapt is our species’ superpower. It’s why we have managed to spread to and live in every climate our little planet has to offer from the frozen waste of Antarctica to the broiling deserts of Africa.

The universe, as I’ve constantly had to be reminded, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what you do or don’t want. What you’d rather not deal with. How you wish it were different. As my college roommate used to infuriatingly tell me, “It’s part of the deal.”

Whatever happens, we adjust. We change as required. We rise to the moment. We go on.

Resilience? It’s just a fancy word for getting used to the things we’d rather not.

When life hands you lemons, you may not always be able to make lemonade. It turns out though, you can get used to eating lemons.

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.