A Year in Review

Going from intense beauty to intense pain is the best way to describe this day exactly one year ago. I had just finished hiking a marathon of the glorious Sunshine Coast Trail and had no idea that night and the following days would bring some of the worst pain I could imagine experiencing. I woke up in the middle of the night in intense pain and at first couldn’t figure out why I was up. When I say middle of the night I mean 9:20pm. I was a teacher and it was completely acceptable behaviour to go to bed at 8pm. I quickly realized there were shooting pains in my leg, and after the confusion of being awoken by pain I started to analyze the situation. Quickly I realized I had no feeling across the top of my foot and up the side of my leg, which was really concerning. Thinking it may have been due to the way I was sleeping or something temporary I tried every at-home remedy to fix it and soon realized that I was probably going to need to go to the emergency room, as this was not temporary.

I called my friend and she told me she was on her way to pick me up. The first trip to emergency was a failure as my pain perplexed the doctor, but he decided I was not in enough pain to stay. He opted to give me a deep tissue massage and sent me back home. Unfortunately this massage was a terrible idea and the pain grew exponentially over the next couple hours. Being the somewhat stubborn person I am, as the pain became intense enough to make me want to pass out and start puking, I refused to go back to the emergency room. The doctor already told me there was nothing wrong with me, so why would I go back? I tried every possible thing I could to keep the pain away, not knowing that acute compartment syndrome exists and this was a pain battle I was most certainly going to lose. Soon my friend convinced me that she was taking me back to emergency, and despite my resistance to the idea it was exactly what I needed.

I could write for days about what transpired over the next 48 hours, but there would be a common theme in everything I would write: PAIN. INTENSE, INTENSE, INTENSE PAIN. Finally after discovering that I likely had compartment syndrome, they had me air lifted to Comox where I would be rushed into surgery. A few hours earlier I had never heard of compartment syndrome, and now it was taking over my life. How could something you didn’t even know exists suddenly be impacting you so personally? I remember googling compartment syndrome as my friend had left the hospital to go get food. We had talked about not knowing what is was, but decided it was best if we listened to the doctors and didn’t google it. Unfortunately my willpower is embarrassingly awful and the minute my friend stepped out I grabbed my smartphone and went to the most reliable source for everything on the internet: Wikipedia. It took about 12 seconds for me to realize that reading about acute compartment syndrome on Wikipedia was a terrible idea. I couldn’t continue reading after the part about the potential for loss of limbs, so I quickly put my phone away and had to pretend that I hadn’t seen this when my friend returned. On a slightly funny note, my friend told me months later that she had left the hospital and immediately also googled compartment syndrome, and also was not revealing to me what she had found. I am glad our combined willpower is that terrible.

I initially went into the hospital on April 27^th and on April 29^th they finally confirmed I had acute compartment syndrome in my lateral leg compartment (after a million and one tests) and proceeded to perform a fasciotomy. What does that mean you may ask? Well, an inflexible fascia surrounds the compartments in our legs, and when pressure builds in the muscle compartment it puts intense pressure on the entire compartment. Eventually the pressure becomes too intense and as a result muscles and subsequent nerves can suffocate and die. In this process a lot of toxins are released into the body, which come in the form of something called creatine kinase (CK). As the muscles die a ton of CK is released into the body, which creates one sick human, or in this case, one sick Chrissy. Fun fact: your normal CK levels range from 30-120, and mine were hitting upwards of 10,000. I take back the part where I just called that a fun fact. It was actually very opposite of fun.

On the morning of April 30^th the surgeon came in to give me the unfortunate news from my surgery. As I sat alone in the hospital room he explained to me what he saw when he opened my compartment. He expected the muscles to bulge out of the compartment, but instead there was no response. He would wait to see if they were stunned by the trauma that had occurred, but only had a small time frame to ensure I did not lose my leg with the toxins that were being pumped to the rest of my body. I remember sitting stunned with that news and not sure how all of this could even be possible. Seventy-two hours before this I had been hiking through the Sunshine Coast Trail, and within a few days things had drastically changed and the doctor had just left me to think about what life would be like without some of my leg muscles. How was this even happening?

I had been scheduled for surgery for the next day so I had only over a day to contemplate this shocking news, and pray that my muscles could be saved. Leading up to surgery on May 1^st I became very sick and was put into isolation. The nurses didn’t think that I would be able to go to surgery anymore, but the surgeon knew the surgery needed to happen. I should have known ahead of time that the sickness was a good indication that my body was harboring dead muscles that needed to be removed. Going to surgery on any normal occasion isn’t the best, but when you add a fever of 105 and no strength to even move yourself from the bed to the operating table, there are other things, such as dying, that would seem far superior to going into surgery. Needless to say, this was one of the lowest days in the process and my body felt like it was shutting down. I didn’t have a ton of time to consider what was coming and honestly just wanted to be in surgery so I could be on the road to recovery and out of pain.

I will never forget the look on the nurse’s face when I asked her if she could tell me what happened as I was in recovery from surgery. She put her hand on my hand and looked at me, like a mother looking at her daughter. Before words could even come out of her mouth, I could read the look on her face and knew what was coming. I started to cry and tears welled up in her eyes as she began to cry with me, before even telling me anything. The news at that point was inevitable: my muscles didn’t survive. Eventually she let me know that they had to remove all the muscles in my lateral compartment, there was damage in my anterior compartment and my nerves were also not responding. I think back on this moment, and although that nurse delivered some of the worst news through this process, she was such a kind and compassionate soul who helped to ease the bad news. God knew she was the nurse that needed to be there in that moment to comfort me as I received the news I had been trying my hardest to prepare for going into surgery.

The following months came with so much processing. From questions of what I would be able to do to when I would be able to be back to normal life activities. Would I be able to walk? Had I just gone on my last hike? How much of my identity was built around the things I do rather than who I am? Each day required so much mental strength just to accept the new reality. I don’t have my muscles. I can’t do anything but accept this and do what I can for maximal recovery and the best new life I can imagine. But what does this new life look like? What will I be able to do? These were the toughest questions and the toughest ones for the doctors to answer. A lot of the time the doctors and surgeons I would see would look sad when they told me that unfortunately some things may have to change, and I will still be able to do activities in time, but I will have balance issues and will require a leg brace. I was told I would have drop foot, and I could do activities that did not require a lot of balance, but I could always use a cane if I wanted to try things. This was tough stuff to chew on. Yes, I would be able to do activities. Yes, I would be able to walk. But knowing that all of my favourite outdoor activities would be off the table broke my heart a little bit.

In the months to come, there was miraculous healing that shattered the beliefs that the doctors had for me. I do not have drop foot, and also do not depend on the brace anymore, and this happened after only a few short months. To this day I go to doctors and surgeons and love seeing their face as they read my chart and then are shocked at what I am able to do. No, my foot does not function normally. No, I don’t have any feeling in my leg or foot to this day. Yes, I do have balance issues. But all of that is so minimal when I think of the things that I AM able to do. I do not have to use a brace, and no longer have drop foot. This winter I even strapped on skates and challenged myself to an activity that is centered on balance. The initial try was comical, but also a realization that becoming accustom to my new [dis]abilities may involve a tough adjustment period. The journey is certainly not all hugely successful moments, and there is a ton of frustration. Seeing what you were able to do before, and knowing that the smallest activities are now equivalent to climbing a mountain is frustrating. Really frustrating. Fortunately, I’ve always thrived with a good challenge, and on my good days I choose to see new activities as such. My goals may seem much smaller, but the accomplishment is still grand in comparison. I went rock climbing a couple months ago, and despite being unable to do much at all, it was a significant moment of trying something and being alright with failing because I had tried.

Initially every recovery effort was focused on the physical and the only thing that got me through each day was compartmentalizing my brain and experience as a coping mechanism of sorts. Each day needed to be dealt with separately and this is how life went on for many months. Eventually the emotional processing of everything started to take precedence, and this has been much tougher than the initial physical struggles. I felt like everything physically was progressing and moving forward, and I was excited to finally get back to doing physical activities that I had the capacity to do. As I began to be able to do more physically and could finally ride my bike and be active again, I started to face a completely new hurdle. In July, only a couple months since compartment syndrome came to visit and change my life entirely, I woke up one morning and lost vision in one of my eyes. This was more terrifying than anything I had experienced through all the recent trials, and began a whole new journey while simultaneously still dealing with the repercussions of losing my muscles. For months I went without vision in one of my eyes and started my master’s during all of this. Being a full time student, reading was something I was supposed to do a lot of, and would leave me with a headache after about three minutes. I had surgery in October during the middle of my semester and for a few weeks after that my vision worsened before it became slightly better.

The first semester of my master’s came with a lot of adjustment and hurdles I did not foresee on top of the unknown workload and normal adjustments to the academic life again. I finished my first semester of my master’s and felt like I got hit by a truck with the impact of everything piling up finally having room to be processed. After 7 months of daily pain and a rollercoaster of emotions, I was tired. I finally had a chance to breathe, but this also meant time to think about all that was going on in my life. I thought that sorting through all of this would take some time, but I did not know that five months later I would still be trying to get my feet back on the ground and feel like everything has finally stopped spinning. The reality is that these past months have been really hard and continue to be hard. When I felt like I already couldn’t breathe from everything that was going on, there was always something more to be added to my plate. In January, after months of abnormal levels of pain in my other leg, I was finally diagnosed with compartment syndrome in my other leg. This time it is chronic but in need of surgery soon to stop it from progressing to acute. I am definitely thankful this case has been caught before it is acute, but also very ready to be done with surgery and once again on the road to recovery.

So where does this leave me exactly one year after getting compartment syndrome? That is a good question, and I guess I wished it could be a much happier place with many more achievements under my belt. Progression is beautiful, but when there are stagnant periods and alternate hurdles coming alongside the initial tough road, it is frustrating and difficult. The other day I sat in front of the dryer at the laundromat and watched mesmerized as a coloured sock tossed and turned through the repetitive drying cycle. As any normal person does, I suddenly pictured myself as that poor sock and realized that I could oddly relate. I sometimes feel like my life is flipping upside down, and I am continually being strewn around with no hope of stopping. In the moment it seems like nothing is ever going to stop and life is too much to handle. But I realized this: in the laundromat I was on the outside and knew the truth; I knew the dryer would stop and the tumultuous ride that my poor pink sock was on would eventually come to an end. As an outsider with a different insight on the situation, I was able to see something different and be less stressed about the awful situation that my poor sock was in. Just as I was on the outside in this situation, I know that there are people in my life who can see my life as an outsider with hope for my future. In the moment I am stuck being flung around, tossed and turned and repeatedly beaten down with no end in sight, but I need to rely on others who can see things differently for me right now. 

So, at the end of a year I am shamelessly asking for encouragement. I probably have never needed encouragement more than now in my life, and would appreciate if you would like to pray for me. I am questioning God in all of this, but know that this is where I need others to intercede on my behalf because I simply don’t have the strength to do it anymore. I want to cling on with hope but know that I am being blinded by circumstances and am having trouble seeing outside of them. If you have made it to the end of this, thank you for taking the time to read this and allowing me to use writing as a form of therapy to process this past year.