The credit belongs to the man who strives valiantly… who errs and comes up short again and again … who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

This is a well-known (edited) quote by Theodore Roosevelt, who suffered from childhood asthma, but pushed himself to achieve physical prowess, nonetheless.

For TR, “daring greatly” involved a charge up San Juan Hill, safari in Africa, and grueling expedition on the Amazon River.

“Daring” for the ordinary person will not involve those levels of extreme effort—especially not me. I am the least daring person I know.

I shy away from new and uncertain enterprises and generally anticipate any and all possible disasters or detours to any carefully laid plan.

This is one reason I chose “Confidence” as my motto for the New Year.

With more confidence, I reasoned, I could be more daring.

How could I have known less than six weeks into my ill-fated “Thrive in ‘25” experiment, “confidence” would mean “daring” to put one foot in front of the other and shuffle across a room a mere sixteen hours after surgery, while my incision was still throbbing and stinging, my left arm was swollen and practically useless, and I was terribly disoriented from the aftereffects of anesthesia and pain medication?

This was the situation the morning after surgery when Troy, an Iraqi war veteran, entered my hospital room with a walker and helped me to stand and make my way to the physical therapy room. Thank goodness, it was only two doors down the hall.

When I arrived, I was allowed to sit and gather my thoughts and my courage, while I was instructed on what I could and could not do after I got home. Then I was handed a laminated paper with a set of eight exercises of varying difficulty, which I achieved with varying degrees of success.

Then with Troy behind me, holding onto a belt around my waist and my daughter Heidi walking backward in front of me, urging me forward, I shuffled across the room, admittedly making more progress than I thought was possible.

So, every day I exercised and edged toward more mobility. One day, while doing the seated exercises, I was so frustrated with the whole business that I simply pulled the blanket up over my head and sobbed. When I finally stopped and lowered the blanket from my face, there was a therapist kneeling on the floor on my left and a nurse kneeling on the right. They soothed my feelings and gave me Powerade to drink, and the session proceeded.

The days followed a repeated pattern of meals, physical therapy, lying in bed, sitting in the chair, my children and grandchildren coming and going. After a few days, when I was a little more mobile, my children would insist I get in a wheelchair and be wheeled outside to the patio by the river.

This was a great blessing…to be in a hospital by the St. Johns River, and to be in a room with a window that looked out on the river and the sky.

I enjoyed excellent care from nurses, doctors, assistants, dieticians, and physical therapists. I had no unexpected developments or setbacks.  

My biggest challenges:

1. The immobility and restraint required after hip surgery. I had to remain on my back in bed. At night, I had to sleep with my legs strapped to a “hip abduction” foam rubber form (A-frame shaped), so I wouldn’t cross my legs in my sleep. Compression socks were required to prevent blood clots, and orange gripper socks were necessary to prevent falls during therapy.  

• Muscle spasms. I experienced the first of these in the hospital and then half a dozen more after I moved into my daughter’s house for five weeks. The muscle spasms, I later learned, are normal, and the natural consequence of your body trying to adjust to its new reality. I can’t adequately describe the excruciating pain. They come out of nowhere, are not brought on by anything you can predict, and are agonizing to suffer through. Muscle relaxers eased them.

• I missed my dog, Fletcher. I felt terrible that he wouldn’t know where I was, or why I had abandoned him. He, on the other hand, was absolutely fine. He had never had separation anxieties. He never met a stranger, never minded going to the groomer or the vet.  He was with a dogsitter he already knew. Heidi gave me regular updates on Fletcher, and I tried to talk myself into believing he was fine, but I still grieved over him.

These are the cogent memories, scattered as they are, of The Hospital Stay.

What did I learn?

First: when you’re “down,” (I mean that in every sense “down” can mean,) you have to excuse yourself for being weak and vulnerable and acting out of character.

Second: trust the people taking care of you and do what they say. Give yourself permission to ask for help and try not to be embarrassed over your lack of dignity, because you look and feel awful, or as my grandmother used to say, “like something the cat dragged in.”

Third: always shift your mind back to the positive. I was thankful to live in a town big enough to provide expert medical care. My children all live in Jacksonville and didn’t have to drive great distances or check into hotels to be available for me.

I was thankful I was in good health to start with; thankful my injuries weren’t more severe than they were. I had good neighbors watching over my house, and good friends checking on me.

You never know from one day to the next what “Daring Greatly” may come to mean. Sometimes it’s as simple… and as challenging… as being a good patient and putting one foot in front of the other.