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Outside Magazine September 2001

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A World of Hurt (Cont.)

THE SECOND WEEK, friends began dropping by and leaving gifts. Ed, a philosophy professor, my bicycling compadre and intellectual foil, left It's Not About the Bike, by Lance Armstrong, and Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence (the redoubtable Lawrence of Arabia). Wade, my climbing partner, left Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber, by Steve Roper. Ken and Carol, skiing companions, gave me a glossy dream-book of photographs of Patagonia. Richard, my college mentor and also a philosophy professor—a Woody Allen humor omnibus. Bill, an old history professor—the obscure and brilliant works of Patrick Leigh Fermor. Annie, fellow scribbler and tough thinker—The Immortal Class, by Travis Hugh Culley. John, colleague and expedition partner—a bottle of Captain Morgan rum and the current issue of Playboy. My mother—a tape of a lecture, "Choosing the God Who Answers by Fire," by the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. Vicki came by with a vintage bottle of tequila. Rick slipped a six-pack of Guinness into the fridge. My daughters drew me entire books' worth of get-well pictures.

Sometimes, all you have to do is fall off your bicycle—something seven-year-olds manage without getting hurt—and you find you are connected to the souls of others by a thousand invisible cords. This is lesson number two in reverse.

ON THE NINTH DAY after surgery I shaved, left-handed, almost taking off my head. Day 11, I typed the whole day, left-handed. Day 13, I walked three blocks, had a relapse into incapacitating pain, and spent the next 24 hours in bed.

The third week, the horror of rehab began. My physical terrorist was a man named Jim Scifres. Big Jim. He was soft-spoken and easygoing. Jim had once been a football player. He'd busted his own shoulder. He weighed 260 pounds and could have ripped my arm off. Instead, he bent it, bit by bit. He told me to let pain be my guide, which I found hilarious. If you walk through a physical therapy clinic you will hear people screaming behind the curtains. Were you to literally let pain be your guide, you'd never go to physical therapy. You'd stay home, eat popcorn, watch old movies.

If you want to get better, it's gonna hurt. Big Jim serenely denied the validity of this philosophy, and then blithely proceeded to put the hurt on me. Before the end of our first session he showed me some stretching exercises I should practice at home. I did them more religiously, more rigorously than a Tibetan monk does his straight-backed recitations.

The fourth week I showed up for my second appointment barely able to move. Jim asked me what I'd done, and I admitted I'd tried to do a push-up.

"Time somebody told you the truth," he said. "Four to six months for 75 percent recovery, a year to full recovery. You won't be doing push-ups anytime soon."

The next time I saw him I was almost paralyzed. He put my shoulder in one of his Greco-Roman holds and asked me what I'd done this time. I admitted I'd done 200 reps for each exercise. He shook his head and suggested I try 20.

And so it went. Jim would put the hurt on me, then I'd go home and hurt myself on my own. All those years of mountaineering, the most masochistic of endeavors, stood me in good stead. Jim complained that I was the most noncompliant patient he'd ever had, but I don't believe it. I did everything he said—every stretch, every exercise—500 percent.

Thus the third lesson of injury: to be patient.

Except that I don't think I really learned it. I wanted to, I tried to, I fully recognized this wreck as my propitious opportunity to work on one of the outstanding inadequacies of my character. And I gave it my best shot—but in the end I think I was mostly pretending. I don't think the true ennobling nature of patience really sank in. Every time I had a slight bit of improvement, I'd idiotically come to the conclusion that I was healed, go out and scrabble up an easy pitch or two or enter a bicycle race, then pay for it.

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