10 years ago, I was visiting my cousin Adam and his girlfriend Keri in Portland for the weekend. It was a pretty amazing weekend. It was the first time visiting my cousin on my own without other family there and we went out and did so much fun stuff! I really felt like it was a real “adult” trip.
The highlight of my weekend in Portland was going out on Adam’s sailboat. I remember that there was pretty much no wind that day so we were more motoring than sailing, but I still got to go out on the boat and check out the work that he had done on it. Even with not really getting to sail, I loved being on the water.
After saying goodbye to Adam and Keri at the Portland airport, I went to my gate and waited for my flight (I think this was still in the time where you had to line up for Southwest to have a good spot in the A group). I was sitting by the gate and when it was time for me to get up and get on the plane, I tried to stand and immediately had a shooting pain and collapsed on the ground.
To this day, I have no idea how I got onto the plane, through LAX, and home. I’m sure I was a little out of it due to the pain. I just remember waking up the next morning and not being able to put weight on my right leg. Of course, my first reaction was to call my mom. And since I had awesome health insurance then, she told me to make an appointment and see a doctor to figure out what happened.
At first, I was diagnosed with a torn quad muscle (knowing what a torn calf feels like now, I finally understand why I was diagnosed with that at first). After a few weeks of the pain, I saw another doctor and got the same diagnosis again but was also told to go to physical therapy 2-3 times a week to help my recovery (at the time, my insurance covered all appointments in full so I was fine doing that). I was getting ultrasound therapy for a few months with very little improvement. My pain started to change into a locking sensation in my hip.
After sharing that information with my physical therapist, he got me a referral to the surgeon who ended up being my first hip surgeon and properly diagnosing me after months of believing that it was a muscle tear.
9 months from collapsing in the airport I had my hip surgery. The journey with my hip issues has been going ever since.
It’s so crazy to think that it has been 10 years since I fell in the airport. It feels like yesterday and a million years ago at the same time. But instead of focusing on that somewhat annoying anniversary, I’m focusing on the fun that I had on that trip. I had the best time with Adam and Keri that weekend and I think that that was the trip that really built my friendship with Keri. I saw her in person so few times from the time I met her until she passed away. So each of those in-person memories is so precious to me.
Even though that trip 10 years ago ended on a pretty sucky note, everything else leading up to it was so amazing and my only regret is that I don’t have more pictures from that weekend.
