The Grafter

I’ve had a bit of a dilemma up until recently: how high to aim? How on earth do you set goals and get motivated when you have no idea whether you’ll even be able to climb properly again? How do you commit so much of yourself to something that you can’t fully believe in? Sure, there’s hope, though it sometimes feels like a distant, unlikely thing. At times, fairly often recently actually, its been nigh on impossible to summon up much motivation to do much other than the bare minimum because it just feels like there’s no point and no hope at getting anywhere near back where I was. Obviously, that’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hats off to the surgeon for coming up with this!

The injuries to my wrist and heel especially were pretty bad. The surgeon in Norway said that the heel might not be operable, and best case scenario was that it was operable but it would be damage control; worst case scenario was that he operates on it, but its so painful a few years down the line that it would need to amputated. I never spoke to the surgeon who did my wrist, but they were never very worried about that.

It’s still early days post op, so I can’t really tell how its all going to work out, but I think (hope) that I can rule out worst case scenario at least. My physio and consultant are both extremely happy with how my range of movement and strength of my wrist and heel are improving actually. The bones have healed in a pretty good position, the sub-talar joint is in surprisingly good condition, and hopefully the metal work will not be a problem in future. So, I think I have actually been extremely lucky given the severity of the injury.

So, in short, I don’t know how things will pan out with climbing. But that’s not a reason to give up; its precisely the opposite. I can’t really set tangible goals, so the goal is to be satisfied. However things work out, I am going to look back knowing that I did everything possible to give myself the best chance. If I’m going to have any chance of getting back to climbing, and I think that’s what my surgeon and physio have given me, then I’m going to have to fucking earn it. And if I can get back to climbing, then I’m going to be ready, I’m going to work with what I’ve got.