Stagtine, 11. This, All, Soon Will Pass

Section 1, Chapter 8

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The first day of August is etched into my memory, like a name in the bow of my life’s ship.

During the warmup lap around the athletic field for the first football practice of my last year in high-school, I fell and I have never really gotten up. I did not trip or stumble. I exploded. A genetic timebomb that hitherto ticked silently detonated loudly, instantly. Its final tick, my final healthy moment, that August afternoon.

I lived in Columbus, Ohio in the upstairs, spare room of the athletic director’s home. The school systems around northeast Ohio, where we grew up, did not allow homeschooled students to play sports and so my parents allowed me to move to Columbus, two hours south, to live with strangers, and play on their football team. It was an independent team that played top-tiered schools and attracted players from across the greater area.

But, under that August sun, as I laid helplessly, writhing in pain, life changed, forever.

“Here. Take my hand,” offered Luke, The Ohio State Athletic Trainer. “Let’s take a look.”

I was diagnosed in the field with a severe hip strain.

“A pulled muscle, really,” claimed an orthopedic doctor at Ohio State. “You just need some rest, a good stretching. Ice. Don’t forget to ice.”

By November, however, it was only worse. By December, I could barely walk. By the end of January, I had undergone numerous procedures and substantial surgeries and was bedridden until late April, at which point I underwent two more surgeries and lived, fully in bed, until late August. Over the next six years, I collected over three hundred doctor appointments, traveled across the country multiple times (visiting various experts), underwent a multitude of extensive surgeries, lost the ability to walk, learned how to walk again, and weighed less than I did in the sixth grade.

My body undulated under the torrential weight of insecurity and its pains. Lost in a whirlpool, it spun and rotated within periods of intense, unexplained weight loss and intense, unexplained weight gain—I would lose eighty pounds in the span of a month and then spend the next trying to gain it back. I was nestled in a cyclic and painful exchange between life and death and I was going nowhere.

I lost the ability to eat most foods and, still today, I can only eat twenty-one “things”—such as, Celtic sea salt, russet potatoes, horseradish, and beef. Still today, twelve years later at this writing, I have not consumed any food, water, or washed my body with any ingredients not from this short list and not from our own home’s kitchen. Not once. No restaurants. No holiday meals. My wife and I have never dined together, breaking the same bread, or bread at all. Still today, some days are too much and I find myself inside, unable to do much more than look at the wall or read a book.

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