Imagine for a moment that you woke up one morning with a simple crick in your neck… Nothing too bad, just like you slept wrong. Thinking it would work itself out, you head off to work and go about your day. By noon, your arm is numb, your hand is throbbing, and you’re beginning to think maybe it is something more than sleeping wrong. But what?

By home time, you can hardly walk, but you have to make it home, your kiddo, who is just four and a bit years old, has swimming lessons, and Mommy always takes him to swimming. You make it home, just, and sit on the back steps, in absolute agony and beg your husband to take the kid to swimming because you can’t see straight the pain is so blinding. What hurts worse at this point? Your neck? Your arm? Your back? Your head? You don’t even know.

Later that night, you tried to put the child to bed, like always. Read the story, lay with him until he falls asleep, but you cannot lay down. At all. The pain is indescribable. Sleep is impossible, you can’t lay, you can’t stand, you can’t do anything. The next morning, there is no work, there is just getting to the emergency room because something is wrong. Unfortunately, the best they can do is pain meds. If offered the opportunity to sleep for a couple hours. Glorious sleep. But after two hours, I am right back where I was.

I remember calling work and distinctly telling my boss “Don’t worry, this will pass. It’s just a couple days. I’ll be right by Monday.” Turns out, that was an unintentional lie. But I had absolutely no clue how bad it was going to get.

The pain was unending. I got a hold of my family doctor who saw me immediately and put me in the queue to see someone at the urgent neurology clinic at the local university hospital. They were quick to ascertain that there was something else at play.

When I woke up that Wednesday morning, I had no idea what I would be facing. I did not know that those events would forever change the landscape of my life. Leading me down the road of bi-weekly physiotherapy, traction, and acupuncture for seven months leading up to surgery. I tried to work three days a week, to keep things normal for myself and my work portfolio, but it proved to be too much for me. Trying two days was better, but still agonizing. High doses of neural inhibitors to block the pain receptors left me in a fog of confusion and only slightly reduced the pain. Sleep became an elusive animal that came only in two-hour blocks.

These months culminated in surgery number two, but things were never the same. The damage was done, and the future was changed. Feeling never returned to my arm, and the pain never subsided so I had to adjust; this was new normal. In a blink, everything I had once known, was no more. My life, my work, my everything, was gone.

The career I spent years building ended, in a blink. I could no longer manage multiple projects at once, handle the budgets, the clients, the work. I could no longer walk to my projects, spend hours on the job, keep the facts or figures straight. I didn’t have the stamina to do all that I’d been doing. Most days, I couldn’t hold a pen. The blinding headaches would come and go with rapid frequency, shooting pain down my arms. I’d drop things or fling things, the spasms random. The pain would make me angry and frustrated.

At home, I feel like I failed my family. My son made me a little bell of Lego I could ring to call for help, him, my little caregiver, doing all he could to make me comfortable. But did he miss out? Not having a Mom who could run, play, and do all the things a normal Mom could do? I tried to volunteer at the school and help where I could, but it never felt enough. Too tired to play, I was unable to run and chase him, and play all the games he wanted.

In a blink it was all gone, and it felt like I’d never get it back. The years ticked by, and things did not get better. Different things declined and while some areas stabilized and other areas, I was able to adapt, like being able to manage more day-to-day tasks. After twelve years and much work, one has to accept and adapt. It’s not all bad – I’ve come to appreciate all that this new life has to offer. It has just taken time to come to see all the good things that came about from the events of the August day and the kink in my neck.