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My Story Isn't Finished

16 April, 2022
2 min read
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In September of 2020, I had a nasty fall off my mountain bike. No, I wasn't wearing a helmet. Yes, I know it was stupid. “But I was only cycling from work. Accidents don't happen between work and home, do they?” (#hindsight2020 - how fitting.) I woke up in hospital in severe shock; I remember being extremely cold, shivering, while my nostril was being assaulted with the Covid Swab. An MRI-scan later, I learned that a fractured skull and hole in your jaw is a fitting reward for trying to be Mr. Tough Guy (Look, mom, no helmet!) The months that followed were hell. It is hard to articulate exactly how the mind and mood cope with a severe concussion, but what I can say is that it makes you question everything. EVERYTHING. Especially when I heard, at a follow-up consultation, that another guy had a similar fall the previous week and ended up with a broken neck. That could have been me. Why wasn’t it? What did I do to ‘deserve’ the ‘lighter’ punishment? Heaven knows, I am no saint. That is when my niece, Emily (who is first on my emergency contact list and who was also just in time, on that day, to see me being loaded into the ambulance), told me something that stuck to my core. Emily is a Believer. And when you see her enthusiasm and passion for life, it is hard not to be affected by it. As Emma approached the street in which I was lying unconscious that day, the backdrop was of a sunny spring afternoon, a gathering crowd, an ambulance and someone laying lifeless on newly paved asphalt. I can’t imagine what that sight had awoken in her, but she was tearing up as she spoke about this months later. “I just don’t understand this; how something like this could make you wish you were dead,” I must’ve said. This is when Emma looked my in the eye and said, “I believe it wasn’t your time yet. Your work here is not done yet.” I don’t remember my reaction at that moment, but it is now a year later, and I am convinced that that fall is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. And my ZOX band serves as the perfect reminder. THANK YOU!