Channelling tough breaks into writing truly therapeutic

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/07/2024 (669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was my favourite physiotherapist who was tasked with breaking the awful news to me. I don’t think my doctor would have been able to do it — we’re too close.

Last August, after months of being bedridden, suffering countless insufficiency fractures and undergoing several unsuccessful attempts at trying to rehabilitate me, I received life-altering news. My physiotherapist sat in the chair across from my bed and said we needed to talk about my rehabilitation. I remember thinking, “great, we were finally ready to start trying to get me up and walking again” after breaking bones in my knee joint in June, when my leg buckled trying to stand and snapped like a dried twig.

But the look on my physiotherapist’s face gave away what she was going to tell me before even uttering a word. I knew what she was going to say: my walking days were over. My feet would never touch the ground again. The day of the fracture would be my last attempt at standing and walking. And it was a horrible experience.

In the back of my mind, I knew this was a possibility all along. My osteoporosis and metabolic bone disease were severe and because of the nutrition and medication I require to live, it makes these conditions almost impossible to treat. The treatments simply don’t stand up to the damage inflicted, and I continue to incur more damage to my bones.

There are three segments of the spine — cervical, thoracic and lumbar. Each segment of mine has a different type of scoliosis. I’m being pulled and twisted in three different directions. My kyphosis is so bad I can no longer sit up. It’s also caused me to become a hunchback and to lose inches of height. My torso is condensed. My abdomen and diaphragm are squeezed together. I have unrelenting back pain and can no longer feel my feet. I get numbness and tingling in my hands.

I get more compression fractures from being turned, boosted, transferred and even just from things like coughing and sneezing. My back is inoperable and a huge headache to deal with. I can’t even tolerate sitting up in a wheelchair or a chair. I can’t reposition myself or turn myself, either — that requires two people’s assistance. I’m basically stuck laying flat on my back with a pillow under my knees. Bathing, moving and transfers often bring me to tears.

I was breaking a lot of other bones, too. I broke my pelvis rolling over in bed. I broke my leg three times in less than six months. My bones couldn’t support my body anymore and I’m not a big person.

While it wasn’t totally unexpected, this new development totally devastated me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to talk to. There was no one I knew who could relate to me. This isn’t an everyday occurrence.

I was sobbing in bed, alone, when I felt the intense urge to write — a feeling I hadn’t felt in years. I opened up the Notes app on my iPhone and just started writing. It was a story about a single mom who was a victim of the ’60s Scoop who has her life upended by a breast cancer diagnosis.

I just kept writing. It poured out of me. The file got so big it started crashing the app. I moved it over to the Pages app. In five days, I had written a draft of my first novel from my hospital bed. That book saved me. It gave me something into which I could put all that grief and frustration. Something productive.

I had tried many times to write a novel in the past and had never been able to finish. It was different this time. It was effortless. I immediately started a second novel, a continuation of my protagonist’s story. The second novel took about two weeks to write. Then, I wrote a third. Then, a fourth. By October, I had a tetralogy (fancy word for a four-book series).

I have written eight novels since last August. I also finally got the courage to pitch this column to the Free Press, which I sat on for almost two years. I lost the ability to walk last August, but in doing so, I found my voice as a writer. And storytelling has been medicine for me.

Art has also been therapeutic for me and something to help me process the challenges of my life. Painting and being part of an online art community have been positive presences in my life.

I’ve been lucky to find a mentor in a famous, award-winning Indigenous author and creative-writing professor. He is helping me find a home for my books. I would be over the moon if someone published my novels, but that’s not why they’re valuable to me. It’s all the other benefits I get from writing. I feel the same way about art — it’s the process that matters, not the end result. It’s subjective anyway.

I’m thankful Creator has bestowed upon me this gift. I love having something that gives me comfort and brings me joy that I can do by myself whenever I want. I don’t need help to write. I just need to make sure my phone is charged.

It’s been almost a year since I got the news. I’m still processing what this means. I still have days when I grieve that loss. Those are the days I write a lot. I realize how lucky I am to have this outlet and I don’t take the opportunities it brings me, like this column, for granted.

One thing I have learned on this journey, is that often when we lose something, if we are open to it, we end up gaining something else valuable.

It’s not so much what happens to us in life — it’s how we choose to react to what happens to us that really matters.

Shawna (Shoshana) Forester Smith is a 41-year-old chronically ill, disabled Ojibwe writer and health-care advocate who lives on a chronic-care unit at Deer Lodge Centre.