DAY 1 – December 18th 2009
It had been a long 3 months. From the day I was told I needed surgery to a long standing problem of over 10 years, the thoughts and what ifs began.
I had managed to deal with the pain for years but over this last year it had become unbearable and I knew I had to do something, otherwise I probably wasn’t going to be able to compete again.
The decision was made after seeing Mr Eames at the Ulster Independent Clinic in Belfast that I would get through the WPC World Championships in November and then have the surgery in December. Somehow, I managed to win the world Championships with a 172.5kg bench press and also took a World Record as well. This competition had meant so much because at the back of my mind I really wasn’t sure if this would be my last or if in fact I would ever lift to the same level again.
The prognosis was unknown as my surgeon had been honest with me and said that he wasn’t sure what else we were going to find on top of the problems we knew already existed. He had also explained that by doing a decompression of the AC, the pain would probably not reduce for 6 months.
If you don’t already know – I have competed for over 20 years now at international level and taken world, European and british titles along with records and my competing is part of me, my life, my mind and has in fact got me through and kept me sane through the times and incidents I thought I would never survive. It also gave me the unique understanding of my clients when they needed someone who could help with their performance or loss of confidence or addiction or any of the myriad of problems a sports person can face. My competing had given me my life – in a nutshell.
On top of that, I thought of all the people who had supported me over the years and invested so much time and love to help me to where I was now. It always felt like if I stopped, I would be letting them down.
So – there I was – now at my Mum’s in Strangford, Northern Ireland, about to get in her car to drive into Belfast. The wave of questions ran through my head, what if I never lift again, what if he finds other issues that will mean I never compete at the same level, what if I cant train, what if what if. Now, I could have dealt with that whole negative thought process there and then but I wanted to let it run as I recognized the pattern from past injuries like when I blew 3 discs in 1996.
It was a “negative motivation” drive which I used to drive me beyond passion to get back into competition which then became not useful and in fact destructive. The problem with the negative motivation is that it means you always feel you have never done well enough and you end up deconstructing every success you ever had,.
The learned change to positive motivation changed the feel of it – that desperation to succeed became more like a quiet stealth bomber and this time it was just like that instead of the palpitations of fear of losing or “not being good enough” after the operation.
I told my Mother I wasn’t going – while I started her car. I continued to tell her I wasn’t going as I drove along the country roads towards Belfast and then finally I pulled up outside the hospital and took 3 goes at trying to park the car.
So- in the hospital – in my room. In walks the anesthetist, handsome, oooooooooooooh he was handsome! Allergies, medication, the 4 G’s (garlic, ginger ginseng and something else which when taken in combination can be the anesthetists nightmare) and dealing with a neurotic patient – he must have thought it was going to be a long day,
Then Mr Eames – the straight talking surgeon used to dealing with sports people and giving me no room at all to back out. However, as we went through the possibilities of what would happen the absolute gut clenching fear hit me as he told me the worst case scenario of what he might find and the agreement I had to make to allow him to fix and deal with what he found – or only do the minimum and probably end up back in theatre again with no hope of ever competing again after wrecking my shoulder completely from carry on competing…………….
What was interesting was the reaction to potential restriction on my training, loss of performance and having to rebuild the mechanisms I had put in place from years of training to achieve the best I had ever done at the Worlds a few weeks ago.
It was almost as though someone had a noose around my neck and was tightening it slowly. Sounds dramatic but the very thought of not being able to train even for a short period of time literally sends panic into my soul. That was quickly sorted with a quick reframe and then I was being wheeled to theatre.
Lying there talking to the anesthetist, I suddenly had another bout of doubt then causing me to go completely conscious on the whole conversation with my surgeon. I asked to speak to him again as I suddenly had doubt over the entire conversation and what he was going to do. Did he really understand how important my competing was to me? Would he just be like my orthopedic surgeon Father and do what he thought best regardless of the patients wishes? Mr Eames patiently came back in and reassured me of the conversation we had and with that I drifted to sleep with the last thing I was to see – the handsome anesthetist.
Waking up and the pain hit me – bless them, bless them – I had gone into shock and they couldny give me anything until it passed and then morphine………….what amazing stuff that is and I have to warn you – you will LOVE everyone! Be very careful and get someone to cellotape your mouth. Don’t call your surgeon a God, do not tell the anesthetist he is lovely and certainly don’t tell the nurse that the op feels like a “fucking miracle” as she wont believe you.
The pain I had before was GONE. The arm pain had for years – was gone. Even though I was full of morphine I could still feel the difference and then Mr Eames came in. It was a massive success – he had completed a subacromial decompression and had also taken the spurs off. He had also found a lot of arthritis through the joint which he had cleaned up and he pointed out that short of replacing the shoulder, that was best he could do. That seriously hit home as to how far I had let my shoulder deteriorate and also started to make me wonder about some of the techniques from NLP and hypnosis in regulating and reducing the pain and using it for pain management. The pain had increased to a level I couldn’t cope with it any more though and none of the techniques were working but I did wonder if I hadn’t used them, would I have dealt with this sooner????
More to come on that one.
My entire thought process – although seriously loved up – had altered as I was able to feel a difference in the reactions in my arm, hand and notice the immediate change and almost miraculous reduction in the “old” pain which had always been there. I was now wondering whether I could be back in time to compete at the Expo in May and everything was pure unadulterated towards motivation and the stealth attack was back.
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