Trevor woke up on Monday morning with the stomach flu. I think it was his body telling him it had enough. He thinks it was the spinach and mozzarella combination in the pizza I made on Sunday night (because he got sick once like 5 years ago after he ate some meatloaf stuffed with spinach and mozzarella). All the same, he spent Monday feeling really crappy. As if a broken leg and black eyes/bruised nose wasn’t enough.
I still hauled him to the orthopedic doctor to have his leg looked at. I was a bit concerned when he threw up on Monday that maybe he had a concussion. When we were at the doctor’s I asked about that. Trevor was lying on the examination table, about ready to pass out from having the flu. I was answering all the questions and they had been looking at his leg. When we started talking about a concussion, the dr said to Trevor “did you take any blows to the head”. For the first time, Trevor lifted his head and looked directly at the dr. His two black eyes and swollen nose obvious as the sun. He didn’t say a word. Then the dr actually said, “Did that happen at the same time as your leg injury”. Trevor just put his head back down, closed his eyes and didn’t say another word. This is what he looked like:
The dr examined Trevor’s head and determined there wasn’t a concussion…it really was just the flu. Regarding his leg, the dr was more concerned about the swelling in Trevor’s knee. He said the cracked bone was not a serious issue, put him in a knee brace and said to come back in two weeks. He also told Trevor that he could put weight on his leg if it didn’t hurt.
Today, Trevor is doing much better. He is pretty much over the flu; he was walking without crutches this morning and had no pain. He’s moving a little slow, but in a few days should be feeling about normal. I expect it will take a few weeks before he can really start moving around like he wants.
Last night, before I shut down, I had the opportunity to “debrief” Trevor about his fight. This is something I like to do after any event – a party, vacation, visit to someone – really anything. I do a major debriefing every year on our anniversary and at New Year’s. It is how I process my thoughts and feelings and how I find out from Trevor what his thoughts and feelings are. I know he’s not a big fan of this, but he does it anyway and I appreciate that. This is how he looked last night - a little more alive than the last picture.
I suggested he write something down about the experience, he did not really want to do that – I’m the writer in the family I guess. So I’ll do my best to convey what he is thinking and feeling about it all.
I asked what his general thought was about the fight. He said, “I did it. It was never about winning or losing, it was about doing it”. It was about committing to a goal, building a plan, executing the plan and then doing it. “I’ve run marathons and I didn’t win them – it was never about the winning then either – it was about the doing”.
Would he have done things differently – he said sure – he would have taken it to the ground. Instead of doing that, when he knew he couldn’t take many more kicks in the leg and he couldn’t stop them, he started to really be aggressive with his punches. He knew he needed to knock his opponent down or out and he almost did that – he just got kicked one too many times.
I asked how he felt during the day of the fight. He said that he was never nervous or anxious; it was just a long day of waiting around. He said that he felt nothing but focus during the actual fight. When the ref stopped it, he knew almost exactly how long the fight had gone. He didn’t hear the crowd, he only felt centered and present. And that is how he wanted to feel.
I asked what his favorite part of the fight was. He said it was the ref and the doctor stopping the fight when they did because if it had gone longer, he could have been hurt worse. I thought that was a really interesting response.
Least favorite part? After the fight, he went down into the dressing room/staging area and they couldn’t find scissors to cut off his gloves. He did not like how long it took to get back upstairs. He knew I would be dying to see him and he wanted me to know he was okay.
Do you want to do it again? Yes. However, there are a lot of other things he wants to do too. Having a broken leg makes it tough to train for an half Ironman triathlon (which we are supposed to start training for in a week). It makes it tough to run (we are coaches for a marathon training group that starts in two weeks). Also, the training for a fight and the training for endurance events are very different and it is difficult to train properly for both at the same time. So while he wants to do it again, he probably won’t for a while.
He too has been overwhelmed with the outpouring from people. He says he has always understood that this was bigger than him – that many other people had a stake in it all. But he never worried about disappointing them or satisfying their needs or wants with the outcome.
This has always been about his quest to be the best he could be. Many times I heard people ask him why he wanted to do it. I heard people tell him that they thought it was a crazy idea and that I was crazy for letting him do it. I can tell you, in our house, there is no “letting him do it”. He does it and you either get on the train or you get off the tracks. That goes both ways. We both come home with crazy ideas – 7 years ago I came home and said that I was going to train for and complete a marathon. At that time, that dream seemed as far fetched as going to the moon. Most didn’t understand that either. Trevor said “okay” and then did whatever had to be done to give me the space to do what I needed to do. The following year, he did the marathon and really….the rest is history.
Now its kind of a challenge to see who can come up with the next crazy idea…a trip to China to run a half marathon on the Great Wall, opening a business, doing a triathlon (when I can’t even swim), opening a second location for our business, sponsoring a marathon training group, running another marathon, coaching the marathon training group, a half ironman….perhaps a full ironman.
Some times I tell Trevor that he needs to slow down because my mind is on overload and I can’t integrate some of these things as fast as he can. And so at first I’m like “there is no way”. For example, after our first triathlon last year, I had learned to swim six weeks before, he said, “I think we could do a half ironman next summer”. I told him that I didn’t want to hear another word about that until I had dealt with what we had just done. After a bit, I thought about it more, and told him that I totally wanted to do that. So here we are.
The dust is settling and we are now able to look at what we’ve done, what we’ve been through and see how it will propel us into our next adventure and all the days that will follow.
I quote the Rocky movies a lot, that’s because I find such great inspiration in them, so as cheesy and corny as it may be, this one hits me now. In Rocky III, they are on the beach after a tough training session and Adrian says to Rocky “after the smoke has cleared and they are done cheering your name, its just going to be us”. This is such a truth, because when all the excitement was over, it was just us….sitting in the ER, waiting for the x-ray results, wondering how this would affect OUR plans. So in the end – you do what you do for yourself…that may sound selfish, but it is actually the opposite. When you do the best you can for you – others are able to do that for themselves as well. And that’s what he did – the best he could do for him. That is all I could ever ask for.
Now we’ll move forward to the next challenge and we can’t wait to see what the other people in our lives chose as their next challenge. So pick something and make it happen. All you have to do is commit.
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