Health to Injury or Sickness
Episode 4
Possible Headlines:
The Hook
[outdoor noises w/ reflective, suspenseful music]
I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this one.
I'm lying at the bottom of a ravine. Shooting pain courses down the whole right side of my body, especially my shoulder. It hurts so bad that I think I’m going to black out. When I move my fingers on my left hand, I feel a burst of pain there too. Blood oozes from my right shin and knee onto the forest floor below me.
I look to see where my bike is, but it doesn’t matter.
[music fades]
Because I'm not going to be able to ride this one out.
All my hard work of regaining strength the last four months is shot. In the blink of an eye, I’ve gone from healthy and fit, to out of commission … again.
The only question is… how am I going to respond to this unexpected transition?
THEMED INTRO: (DON’T RECORD)
[themed music plays]
I’m Art Blanchford, and this is Life in Transition, a podcast about making the most of the changes we’re given. As a married father of three teenagers, long-time global business executive, and adventurer, I’ve been through hundreds of transitions in my life. Many have been difficult, but all have led to a depth and richness I could never have imagined. You’ll get to hear all about them on this podcast so that together, we can create more love and joy in our lives — no matter what transitions we go through.
EPISODE:
Part 1: Why this matters to listeners
Hello everybody, welcome back to Life in Transition. I’m Art Blanchford and today we’re going to talk about a transition that’s not exactly fun to go through, but it’s something that everyone faces at some point: going from healthy and fit to injured or sick.
Whether you get sick only once in a while, or have battled through some really difficult health circumstances, feeling physically less than where you want to be, is difficult and frustrating. I know, because I’ve been there many times — often because of my own hard-headedness.
This episode is not about squashing or denying the negative thoughts and feelings we have when we suffer physically. It’s about making the most of it, as best we can.
Today I’m going to share many moments when I’ve wrestled with unexpected illnesses and injuries, and some practices that have helped me meet these transitions with more openness and ease.
To start us off, I want to take us back to that mountain biking crash I talked about at the beginning of this episode.
[suspenseful music]
Part 2: The Bike Accident
It was August of 2020. After months of being bed-ridden from chronic fatigue syndrome, I had finally recovered enough to get back into my fitness routine. On that particular day, I decided to go mountain biking with my friend, Kevin.
It felt so good to be back out there. The sun was shining and I felt really strong and healthy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that way.
Kevin and I had ridden in this park many times. There are lots of technical trails with varying degrees of difficulty. We’d ridden most of them already, but there was one double Black Diamond descent that I’d never done before. And for good reason. It was the most difficult one by far. It had a huge 20-foot drop-off that took you nearly straight down.
But I was feeling my oats that day, so I told Kevin I was going to try it. He decided to take an easier way down (smarter than me:-) and when he got down there, asked if I wanted him to film me. “No I said, just go on and I’ll catch up to you.”
There’s no rush quite like riding a difficult trail — especially when you take a 20 foot drop like that. My stomach lurched, and my hands held tight to the handlebars as I braced for landing. But when I hit the bottom, I landed only on my front wheel. I didn't get the back wheel down in time, and before I knew it, I crashed into the ground, feeling my right shoulder collapse beneath me. I slid on the ground for 30-40 feet until I slammed into and slid along the side of the boardwalk that I was meant to be riding on.
[crashing sounds]
Once the dust settled, my entire body wracked with pain. I’d fallen on my side when I hit the ground, and my right shoulder had collapsed under me. I knew instantly something had to be broken. I’d used my left hand to protect my face from the boardwalk and so it was also badly damaged.
My right shin was bloody and resembled a tin can that had just gone under a can opener. The skin was stripped and all rolled up like a ribbon. I tried to sit up but almost blacked out because of the pain.
“How am I going to get out of this?” I asked myself. From farther up the trail, Kevin heard me cry out in pain and asked if I was OK. For the first time in my MTB[1] experience I said, “No! I won’t be riding this one out.” We’ve been through a lot of crashes over the years that we’ve managed to ride through, but I knew this wasn’t one I could ride out. I heard him turn his bike around to ride back towards me.
I looked around. There was no way any EMT’s could get to us. I was going to have to find a way to walk out of there. Kevin arrived and asked, “What do you need?”
I replied, “I need food.” I felt woozy and lightheaded and only had water in my Camelback. Right before the drop, I’d given my last energy bar to Kevin because he was running out of energy. So between the two of us, we had nothing with nutrients in it.
Luckily, a few riders came along the trail and asked if they could help. I said, “I need food. Do you have something to eat?” All they had were some energy chews, so I popped three or four of those into my mouth as I lay on the ground.
The energy chews were gooey and sticky, and as I chewed, I felt a temporary crown pop off one of my teeth. It was so ridiculous at this point that I had to laugh. I pulled this big gooey glob out of my mouth, found the temporary crown in the mess, and put it in my pocket to take to the dentist later.
I continued to lay there, eating those energy chews until I felt better. Again I tried to sit up, and again I started to blackout from the pain.
Kevin stayed with me while the other riders went to find a cell phone signal and call the EMT’s so they could get as close as possible to this point in the trail.
So I laid there and asked myself once again, “How am I going to get out of this? What can I do?”
And then it popped into my head, “I can do the Wim Hof breathing.” Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete who developed some unique, short breathing exercises that can affect your nervous system and physiological responses to stress. I’ve used it for years to tackle various fitness challenges — a few minutes of it has helped me double the amount of pushups I can do.
So I started doing the Wim Hof breathing. And then my friend suggested that we use a bike tube as a sling for my right arm. So we set that up, and after a few more minutes of the Wim Hof breathing I felt strong enough to stand without passing out.
By that point a sheriff's deputy had arrived, and he helped me hobble with the sling to where the ambulance was waiting.
[ambulance sirens + transitional music]
The ambulance took me straight to the emergency room. The staff at the hospital confirmed that I had broken my right humerus (the single bone on the top of your arm) into four pieces, likely dislocated my shoulder, bruised some ribs, and suffered serious bone contusions all over my left hand. When my wife wheeled me out of the hospital, my right arm was in a sling and my right leg was bandaged all over. We would be back the next day for surgery.
Part 3: How to Make the Most of the Transition
As I recovered from this whole ordeal at home, I had a choice: to make myself suffer even more by agonizing over this new physical setback, OR lean into all the lessons I’ve learned over the years and make the best of a transition like this.
Going from healthy and fit, to sick or injured is never easy. But my hope is that these practices and tips will help you make that transition a little less difficult.
The first practice is to tune into yourself.
Humor me and put your language scholar hat on with me for a moment. Because I want to talk about the word disease. Separateted, it becomes dis-ease.
The Latin root of the prefix, dis, means Tunis. And ‘tunis’ means trying to be something that you're not.
Trying to be something I’m not always leads to more suffering. It never fails. There have been so many moments in my life where I haven’t taken my health as seriously as I should, or I've tried to do too much, or pretended to be something or someone that I'm not. Case in point: I ended up in the bottom of that ravine because I was trying to be an adventure athlete above my capabilities. And then I paid the price for that. A very intense price.
You see, there’s a conflict that arises inside of us when we're trying to be two opposing things at once, instead of being integrated — or instead of being one.
Even though I don’t like it, sickness and injury often remind me who I am, and signal when I’m not living in integrity with myself.
But by tuning into yourself, you’ll be able to come back to yourself, and come back to oneness. You’ll get back in integrity with who you are.
Second, remember that you are not your health.
Yes, health is VERY important. But whether you’re healthy or sick, fit, or injured, you are a worthy and loved child of God. I have to remind myself of that whenever I’m not feeling 100%, because my health, performance, and fitness are valuable to me, but they do not define me.
Being sick or injured helps me to see what identities I’m clinging to, or what stories I’m telling myself that just aren’t true.
In fact, this is often the perfect time to question everything. Is that thing I thought was SO important really necessary? Probably not. Can work survive without me for a couple days? Yes. Will the world go on, even when I’m resting and recovering? Absolutely. Is outdoor adventure the ONLY physical activity I can do to release work stress? Not at all. Are their other ways to play and connect with friends? For sure!
If you find yourself unexpectedly sick or injured, I encourage you to use this downtime to think through your assumptions on life. Question everything. Look for opportunities to do things differently or think differently and you may be surprised at what you find.
After all, while it is really important, you are not your health.
Third, practice acceptance.
Take stock of where you are, and be present with that. When I resist what’s happening and try to do more or push harder, it usually gets much worse.
There was one Christmas many years ago, when I ignored my need for rest and it all backfired.
[christmas-ey music plays]
I had traveled and worked like crazy leading up to the holidays. It was my usual big Christmas Push before coming home to be with the family for a while. Once there though, I couldn’t get out of bed.
My wife came in to wake me up Christmas morning saying, “Hey, honey, come on. Help get the Christmas meal going and welcome the guests.”
I felt like crap and absolutely couldn't get out of bed. I simply pushed myself too hard, ran my immune system down, and picked up something on the overseas flight home. I had treated work as an emergency when it wasn’t. I’d lived in fight or flight mode without even realizing it. It was like my body was finally able to say, “Hey, I need a break!” and shut itself down because it recognized a need to rest and repair. So long story, short, I did NOT get to enjoy that Christmas with my family. I laid in bed most of that day and the next.
[music ends]
That happened many times in my career along the way, where I wouldn't allow myself to get sick, or I’d pretend I wasn’t sick until I got home and was able to crash. This was again pretending to be something I am not, leading to dis-ease.
That pattern eventually led to getting diagnosed with chronic fatigue. So when I got injured from mountain biking, I knew. I HAD to practice acceptance and give my body what it needed. I had to say, “Ok, this is the way that I am right now.”
Remember, our bodies are always trying to bring us back to ourselves, and to wholeness. Accept what’s happening. Be present.
The fourth way to make the best of this transition is to give yourself permission to rest, relax, and do the things you enjoy.
There was a decade of my life, where the only time I would allow myself to lay around and read a book is if I was sick. And I really loved laying somewhere comfortable, in bed or on a sleeping bag outside, to read.
I can’t help but wonder if sometimes I drove myself so hard to be sick so that I would allow myself the luxury of time to do that. Now when I get sick, I pay attention to the things I want to do and make a note of it. Because chances are, I probably need to make more time for that recharging or relaxing activity when I’m healthy as well to prevent me from getting sick.
So when you are sick or injured, give yourself permission to be completely off. Relax, read a book, lay in bed all day and watch TV — whatever it is that you need to do to recover. And remind yourself, that you don't have to make yourself sick to enjoy those things. You can enjoy them when you’re healthy too. By giving yourself this chill time to recharge, you will keep yourself well and vital.
Have a sense of humor about the situation if you can, and take care of yourself and connect with the people who are taking care of you.
The fifth and final tip I have for this kind of transition is to look at what you CAN do.
When I was recovering from the mountain bike injuries, this helped me a lot. After all, I’d worked so hard to bring my health back up after from chronic fatigue syndrome the four months prior. So it was very discouraging that my fitness — or at least my adventure ability was taken away again.
So I had to ask myself with a spirit of curiosity, “What CAN I do?”
And that really helped. After all, being an adventure athlete is only one part of me. I’m also the family income contributor, a family man, and I enjoy all kinds of things. I realized that even though I was wearing this big sling on my shoulder, I could walk.
So that's what I did. A few days after the accident, I was able to go for a hike in the park. I took walking poles in my left hand to make sure I didn't fall down, but still — I was able to walk at least.
Slowly walking turned into running. It took many more months, but I was eventually able to get back to biking and doing pull-ups and those types of things. It turns out that I really enjoyed the period of time where I wasn’t running or biking because it gave me an opportunity to walk with friends who don’t run or bike. I got to see the world a little differently.
At work, when I struggled to do tasks like typing because my hands were immobilized, I learned how to use speech recognition. Again, I focused on what I could do and that made being injured so much better, so much easier to accept.
I know it can be tough to lose something that's really important to you like your health or fitness, but that doesn't mean you’re completely lost or incapable. There are still good things that you can do. So get curious and ask yourself, “What do I want to do that I CAN do? ?”
Part 4: Conclusion
I’m recording this about nine months since my mountain biking accident. While it was the most painful injury I’ve ever had and the recovery was difficult and long, I can honestly say that it was also one of the smoothest I’ve ever been through. Not because of the particular circumstances, but because of my mindset.
All of those practices helped. Tuning into yourself, remembering that you are not your health, practicing acceptance, giving yourself permission to rest, and looking at what you CAN do — I promise that these will help you make the most of a less than ideal health transition.
I’m a big believer in finding the silver linings of the hardships we go through and scars we earn along the journey of life. Of course, nobody WANTS to be sick or injured. But a lot of good things can come from it.
You might be thinking, “Well, maybe not ALL good things will come from it.” And that’s true. But think about it this way: if life hands you a tough transition like going from healthy and fit to sick or injured, what can you do with it? And how can you make the most of it?
Those are actually great questions to end this episode on, so let me ask you that again. If you’re going through a tough transition right now — whether it’s with your health or something else:
Take a minute and jot that down. Record or write it on your phone. Email or text yourself, or write it on a piece of paper. And please share it with me.
I look forward to hearing how you handled a transition like this and if any of these practices worked for you.
Connect with me on LinkedIn or our website, LifeInTransition.online and let me know if anything stood out to you from this episode. Let a close friend know too — it could be a huge encouragement to them as well.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would mean a lot to me if you shared this episode with a friend.
I’m Art Blanchford, and I’ll see you next time on Life in Transition.
[music plays]
CREDITS (Don’t record)
Life in Transition is co-written and produced by Laura Boach. And if you want to learn more about me and what I do when I’m not podcasting, please visit me at artblanchford.com. Life In Transition is a production of
(GFS Sonic Logo [“Great Feeling Studios” read by my nephew followed by a laugh of my son])
What does this stand for? I would explain this so people don't get confused
