The Power of Delusion…

I love a bit of delusion… and this tale starts with a whole merry heap of it!

So much delusion! I mean we’re not talking toxic positivity delusion, we are talking pure, living in another universe, don’t poke the bear delusion. The kind that beams “IM ABSOLUTELY FINE” with a hint of crazy eye. The type that makes people slowly side step and anxiously whisper in corners about. I now understand this to be trauma. Who knew. Turns out everyone around me did. Yup, they all knew.

For those that are new here I had just spent an hour lying in a field like a ‘whodunnit victim’ after an accident whilst performing aerial hoop. My neck had crunched, the world went dark and my limbs had decided to stop working which was really quite rude.

Now, to be fair my delusions around this whole unfortunate incident did have a fair bit of help.

After 24 hours in major injuries, when i had regained some function and could just about walk at the pace of a drunk sloth, a change of shift at the hospital led to confusion. I was discharged with instructions to rest for a couple of days then resume training. As I looked at my pretty useless hands that were on fire and struggled with my feet that moved like a dog in socks, this didn’t seem quite right, but hey…. Magic… If they say I’m fine then I’m fine right?

And so the delusion began.

Back at the campsite as i debated how to approach a post hospital shower with hands that refused to function and feet that felt drunk my phone rang… it was the hospital… “we’ve had another look at your scans and we’d like to bring you back. Stay put, the paramedics are on their way” Hmmm… i thought. The voices were gentle and calm. Suspiciously calm. The kind of calm that whispers under held breath, ‘don’t…panic…the girl’.

I panicked.

Full body fear panic. And i think that’s the last real fear I felt for about two years.

You see it turned out I had a condition called cervical spinal stenosis. A narrowing of the spinal canal that had left me with zero protection or room for error around my spinal cord. There had been signs. I ignored them all. And so a simple overextension that should have done nothing more than a minor whiplash had caused my vertebrae to give my spinal cord a “really good wallop” (my Surgeons words not mine) and left me unable to move in a field.

I remember, the nausea i felt at the moment of injury. The sound that no-ones neck should ever make, and my complete surprise when my whole body just gave out. It was like an electric shock went through every fibre of my being at the same time as having my strings cut. It felt like my computer system just powered down and failed to re-boot.

So… back on the trauma board I went and back to hospital where a team was there to meet me with even more unnervingly suspicious calm. So many doctors from so many teams it felt like silver service but without the fine dining. When stressed, busy professionals go calm it’s never a good sign and this time the prognosis was not so good.

“You’ve been very lucky” the Neurosurgeon said. “Marvellous” I replied. I do love feeling lucky. “These kind of accidents can cause full quadraplegia” he said. “Oh” i replied. Feeling lucky but with an unpleasant caveat. “You have to have 24 Hr supervision, must not remove your collar and we need to re-scan in 2 weeks” he said. “Okaaaay” i thought, and decided it was best not to pry any further. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. So i was transported gently home, clinging to the one word i actually wanted to hear which was ‘lucky’, filtered out all the rest and decided that, that was all i needed to know. I would sit, and wait for my two week scan when normal life would resume. I had reached delusion level two.

Normal life did not in fact resume.

What actually happened was a mix up with appointments that led to a 10 week delay, and a whole load of time for my brain to categorically decide… it can’t be that serious. Absolutely not. So what if I can’t write my own name… must be a morphine hangover. Legs feel stuck in treacle?… just tired. Feet going blue but don’t feel cold? What a frickin superpower! It CANNOT BE THAT SERIOUS.. Not if i’m here at home… right?

Wrong.

When my scans reached the right eyes of the right people in the right hospital things moved fast. Within 24 hours I was re-assessed. Surgery was scheduled to relieve the pressure on my spinal cord, fuse my cervical spine, get my brain communicating with my body a wee bit better and make me safe. I had suffered a contusion between C5 and C8, damaging and compressing my cord leading to what is known as central cord syndrome causing extreme weakness, loss of balance, co-ordination, fine motor skills and a wide variety of not so awesome functional quirks.

I was clearly told that surgery wouldn’t ‘fix me’. The damage had been done. The surgery was to prevent complete paralysis. I was told my balance would not return, the neuropathic pain in my hands (think the worst pins and needles of your life combined with fire and electric shocks) would most likely remain and my fine motor skills would never be what they were. Neither could i ever risk an impact injury. An impact injury would mean game over.

Delusion reached maximum capacity. Rationality left the building. I just went numb.

With hindsight I think this was just too big for my little brain and heart to handle. For the last 8 years extreme sports, aerial acrobatics and Adrenalin adventures had been my life. They had been my therapy, my escapism and my one route to confidence that I so desperately lacked. I had made this lifetsyle my whole identity, it had led me to my tribe and had saved me from some really dark times, and without it…. Well…. I just didnt know who I was. The potential void was waaaaay too big for me to deal with. So my brain (our brains have amazing ways of moulding reality to keep us alive and sane btw) went into protective denial. It literally took a step to one side and flatly refused to let me feel the gravity of the situation. It whispered ‘you’re all good girl’ That flash of overwhelm you just had? Not real, ignore it, you’re fine, you’ll be fine, now drink your tea through your straw and pick another Netflix marathon. My brain drip fed me a stream of beautiful gloriously warm denial and it was ace. As it turns out…it was also utterly essential.

You see I heard my surgeons words but they never quite sunk in. I don’t remember feeling them. There was a flash of ‘this really sucks’ as my friend drove me back from my consultation, but that’s genuinely as deep as it got. My brain refused to let my emotions join the party. And it saved me.

Because let’s face it, soometimes reality is just grim. We are not designed to live with constant sadness or grief and shock all the time, and what I’ve learned is a little bit of a delusion goes a long way to healing. It gave me enough happy space to believe and breathe. It recharged my battery and kept me optimistic. It meant i had some resilience left in my cup for when the fear broke through and I could just take the lid off one little moment at a time before wedging it firmly back down. It stopped me being overwhelmed.

It worked so well that when i went to my first physio six months later I was shocked when i couldn’t stand on one foot, or hold my balance on two feet with my eyes shut. I was genuinely confused when i really couldn’t tell my left from right. I could do things with my feet, or my arms, but definitely not both. It was like I was outside looking in. It was my body but not my body. It stood up and sat down. I was still ripped but weak as a kitten and I just couldn’t get my head round it. I would have moments of overwhelm that were incredibly intense then poof… they would just disappear, and back I went to delulu land. This was my life for the next three years. Rinse and repeat.

I think if i had lived in the full reality I would not have been able to keep up the momentum for all that time. I think I would have given up. But a little bit of delusion allowed me to keep going. It gave me the space to appreciate small wins without being swamped by loss. It let me view my new world with a vague curiosity that said ‘huh… well would you look at that!’ It rarely ever felt real. But the biggest tool in my delusion box? The art of temporary. I began to think of everything in terms of temporary even though I had been told it was not. The pain in my hands… temporary… my clumsiness? Expensive on the crockery front… but temporary, and somehow this made it bearable. It was the strangest mental gymnastics but it worked. We can always cope with something for a day. One day at a time is manageable especially if tomorrow looks brighter. And if tomorrow is just the same then… well… it’s just one more day right? And so it continued. One day at a time, always believing that tomorrow would be the re-set. Starting afresh every sunrise and never allowing forever to join the plan.

It worked.

Eventually all those days at a time turned into weeks, then months. I could look back and clearly see a before and after, I could see how far I had come. I could see that recovery was happening, slowly but surely and that all those little days and living in the moments had got me through three years. Now I could really look ahead, with optimism and excitement. There was no more dread.

And now… well… now I dont have to keep the lid on the box of what happened. I worked through physio, graduated onto to PT and I have regained most of my function and a freedom to give most things a good old go, albeit with low expectation :) And that is just extraordinary to me :)

In truth the whole experience (I like to reframe it as an unexpected adventure) has left me with some amazing gifts. It’s left me with a safe space I’ve found I can return to at will when life gets overwhelming like an optional retreat. Delusion and denial is an unusual take on health and wellness but there we go! Everything is temporary is now my mantra and i return to it daily for both the good and the bad. The bad, when i need to believe this too shall pass, and the good to remind myself to try and appreciate everything, to be flexible and enjoy each chapter and each moment for what it is, because life can truly change in the blink of an eye and nothing truly lasts forever. Some of you may find this bleak but I have learned to find it comforting and exciting. It’s given me the ability to go ‘right here, right now, I’m safe’ the next hour is unknown and the past is done, but this very moment, well…there is nothing to worry about at all, this moment is a little bit of magic, And that’s all that matters. Delusion gave me that. The ability to shut out the noise and the reality and focus purely on the moment in its most extreme, purest form and it has forever changed me for the better.

So here’s to delusion! I salute you in all your crazy denial and will forever return to you if need demands. Because dear delusion, i think you saved my life xxx