“Life, Interrupted…”
Patrizia Bordignon was doored riding her bike home from work on a busy Melbourne Friday night in January 2019. She sustained head and whiplash injuries, her teeth were broken and she tore the muscles in both shoulders. “The most difficult thing about the accident,” she says “was how much everything hurt all the time. The biggest challenge became isolating the problems so I could work out how to fix them. My Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms (PPCS) took 9 months to diagnose and another 18 months to rehabilitate.” Now into her sixth year of active rehabilitation, Patrizia has travelled the hard road to get to the good place in life. She is almost there.
“The people who know about my accident and how long and difficult the journey to recovery has been for me are amazed at my persistence and resilience.
They have said things to me like ‘Most people don’t get as far as you have’, ‘Most people would have given up long ago and turned to substance abuse to cope’, and my favourite ‘You should be on a disability pension’.
These are not options for me. I had an adventurous life before it was interrupted, and I am striving hard to get it back because I am convinced it must be possible and I want to do everything I can to reclaim my life.
The road to recovery has been hard. It has affected every aspect of my life and has been the hardest thing I have ever had to work through. It will be 6 years in January 2025, and I am still actively rehabilitating myself. But I am, close, very close to reclaiming my interrupted life.
I have read that people respond to traumatic events in the way they respond to other setbacks in life. Building resilience and personal capability is something you need to do when things are okay – it’s very difficult to do when you are in a state of constant pain. I thought I had built a lot of resilience. After all, I had slow walked across Spain, Italy and Portugal for months at a time and I did it for fun and adventure.
Maybe I already had a full bucket of resilience built up in reserve from all that slow walking, but I can say after five and a half years of constant daily rehabilitation that I have built a whole lot more resilience by not giving up on my goal. I have dug deep and drawn on strengths I didn’t know I had. Why? Because the alternative was less favourable and, frankly, unacceptable to me.
And on those darkest of days when I had nothing left in reserve, I chose to be kind and gentle with myself and knew tomorrow is another day. Most of the time that perspective worked. Many times, it was after many tomorrows.
There were 10 things I did that served me well during my recovery. I thought I’d share them in the hope they serve someone else well on their journey back from an interrupted life.
1. Look after your health.
Eating well, sleeping enough and exercising are all important strategies to optimise healing. I made them a priority. Sometimes they required a lot of effort, but I knew just by doing these things well I was giving my body the best chance of recovering. Educate yourself in the basics. You have access to the latest scientific research via podcasts. I learn a lot from experts in their field. The Huberman podcast is my favourite. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman interviews experts who often have their own vehicle for distributing information as well. There is so much we don’t yet about the human body so there is always more to learn. I believe any newfound knowledge will buoy you and serve you well in your healing and when you re-enter normal life.
2. Do the smallest things to give your life purpose.
I focus on what I can do, even if all I can do is fold up and put away the washing. I have worked on mini-projects around the house that I had to ignore for a long time until I had the strength and the ability to work on them. There are still big things waiting in the wings for my attention. Until then, I do what I can to prepare for them, by planning and organising in anticipation for the time I can make them happen. It is important to be chipping away at meaningful things in your life so that you feel like this enforced ‘down time’ is not completely wasted.
3. Abide by the rules of nature and the passage of time.
When I was of sound mind and body, I would cram in as much life as I could in the time I had. But some things, like recovery from a serious and complex accident, cannot be crammed or rushed. I know because I tried and failed miserably. Just ask my doctor. At one check-in she laughed when I told her what I was doing for my recovery. She leaned in and said quietly ‘I don’t ever have to say this to my clients, but you are doing too much!’ Rehabilitation and recovery are a journey that cannot be dictated by medical professionals and cannot be rushed by you. It takes time to heal, to tune in to your body and make sense of what it is telling you, to learn what your body is trying to tell you it needs. The reality is my real life was suspended whilst I entered this new realm of an interrupted life, one that demanded so much focus and attention. There was nothing I could do but embrace the pace and maintain the focus, hoping all the while it was working. It is hard to be positive when you are overwhelmed by sadness at your lost normal way of existing. The feelings of frustration from watching real life happen to other people is difficult. Witnessing them kicking goals and making their dreams come true knowing painfully that your goals dreams have come to a standstill was a constant challenge for me. I learnt that being frustrated served no one and was, quite frankly, a waste of time.
One of the hardest things for me was not having the words to describe what was happening to me in a way that a medical practitioner could understand, to help me. I am not medically trained. So much time slipped by as I unfurled the tangled mess. Finding the right person to help me also takes time and trust, and sometimes a leap of faith. And then there was the waiting. Lots of waiting between check-ins to assess progress and make adjustments. I felt like I did a zillion different rehabilitation exercises over the years. Like most things in life, progress demands a daily commitment of chipping away at a problem. There was a lot of assessing of progress, making modifications, testing my capabilities and being gentle with myself as I dispensed with exercises that no longer served me and embraced new exercises to keep progressing my recovery.
4. Spend time with the people you love.
Let go of the people you don’t. This is paramount when your life has been interrupted. Try to find the joy in the simple things with the people you love. Do fun things at every opportunity. It helps keep you sane and buoyant because this kind of recovery is like being on a rollercoaster of some of your worst imaginings. There will be people who leave your life because of what happened to you. Let them. Don’t fight it. It shows the calibre of their character, not yours. They are doing you a favour. Let go of anyone you don’t value or who does not value you.
Having a furry companion is a great source of comfort. My Jack Russell dog was a constant source of joy and unconditional love throughout my journey. Sometimes just hugging him and stroking his soft fur was enough to calm me and make me feel better.
And learn to love your own company. This may be the hardest thing of all because you will be alone a lot during this time. Embrace it as an opportunity to learn about yourself and do what your body needs most. Our bodies are very good at communicating if we listen.
5. Try and always be positive.
It’s often the only way to stay sane. Being down on yourself and your situation makes things worse. (Sometimes it is easier said than done!) Negative energy attracts more negative energy. Positive energy attracts more positive energy. Speak to yourself in a positive tone. When you find yourself in a negative headspace, do something different as fast as you can to create a positive mindset. It may be going for a walk in nature, watching a funny movie, getting lost in a book, listening to your favourite music (I discovered my happy music was Beatles music), lying on the ground with your legs up a wall or indulging in any pursuit that brings you happiness.
I try and exercise first thing every day. Regular exercise helps build resilience and maintain a positive outlook. It got me out of my head. It also got me out of the house. I taught myself a lot about how to best support my brain. I have become a bit of a science nerd, listening to neuroscience podcasts to keep up with the latest research and implementing the latest protocols, anything that could help with my recovery. I implemented the latest protocols on sleep, nutrition, exercise and supplements. It all had a cumulative, positive impact on my recovery and overall wellbeing that I will continue into the future.
6. Try and be kind to yourself.
It may take longer to heal than you ever imagined possible. Yes, you may want to punch your pillow when nobody is watching or scream at the top of your lungs when nobody can hear you. Give yourself permission to release the rage. It helps to release pent-up negative energy and in doing so, being kind to yourself.
7. Change the scenery.
Remember those old television dramas where the doctor would advise their patient to go spend time by the sea? When you change the scenery, it helps to remove you from your interrupted life and the constant reminders of life all around you seemingly moving on without you. Changing the scenery is the next best thing to going on a holiday!
8. Advocate for yourself, if and where you can.
Only you inhabit your body. Listen carefully to what your body is telling you and speak up for it. Document what is happening to you. Look for patterns. Follow the trails of evidence. Keep talking about what is happening to you. Keep advocating for yourself. Pay attention to how receptive, or not, medical practitioners are to what information you relay them. Their silence may mean they don’t know how to help and likely won’t admit it. So that is when you know to look for someone else to help you. I learnt that the longer a problem went unaddressed, the bigger, harder, and uglier it became to resolve.
9. Move on.
Looking for the right person to help is hard. Not everybody responds the same to a treatment. If your gut instinct tells you a therapy isn’t working for you, move on. Keep trying different therapies. I spent five and a half years with persistent pain in my skull. I had to keep reminding myself the human body is complex. And the people treating you can’t know everything, they’re only human.
10. Try and create a new outlook on life.
Life may never be the same again post-accident. Your old life may not serve you anymore and that may be a very good thing. Pain and suffering changes you in ways you could never imagine. Embrace the opportunities this interrupted life brings to you. It may work out better than you could imagine. My life looks very different now from what it was before accident. As hard as it’s been, I think I’m a happier person for the experience.
