Flashing back to the present, last week our little Bosnian class of three students made it through a short but eventful fifth week of our 44-week course—eventful at least for me.
For the first two weeks, we were in class with our instructor, D1, and for the next two weeks, we were with our other instructor, D2. Week five marked our return to D1’s class. I got the impression she was eager to see what progress we had made during the time she hadn’t seen us every day.
The answer was: quite a bit, although the case system for declining adjectives and nouns still feels ambiguous to me and I know I’m making a hash out of it (and vowels generally) while speaking.
The week, while busy, was also interrupted by two events that reduced my number of in-class language days from five to three. The first was a bout of acute food poisoning that caused me to miss class on Tuesday; the second was our entire division taking a break from language study for the first session of ASEUR205, otherwise known as Western Balkans Area Studies.
In the middle of the night on Monday leading into Tuesday morning, I deeply regretted whatever life choices had led me to being violently ill with what I suspected was food poisoning. It was the second-worst such experience I’ve had; come to think of it, both first and second place have occurred in Arlington, while third place was in Macedonia. All the times I got sick in Tashkent or Rangoon were deeply uncomfortable, but they didn’t compare to the extreme vertigo, disorientation, vomiting, and nausea of this latest episode.
There was no way I could ambulate or peel my face off the bathroom’s cool linoleum floor, let alone drive to class. In fact, I briefly considered going to the emergency room because the intestinal contractions or spasms that followed the most active phases of vomiting were so severe that I worried something unrelated, like a ruptured appendix, might be going on.
In the end, I slept it off and attended Area Studies virtually the following day, along with everyone else. The opportunity to work from home for a day (in English!) could hardly have come at a better time.
And just as I learned that the criminal prosecution of the truck driver who hit me last November would soon be coming to an end back in Burma, almost prophetically, the toenail on my right big toe—the one I fractured in the accident—finally detached after being black and blue underneath for almost a year.
As if those physical goings-on weren’t sufficient, I also started physical therapy last week in Rosslyn, an easy walking distance from our apartment. After just two after-class sessions, I arrived at Friday feeling pain in muscles I probably hadn’t used since before the accident.
I was a little dismayed, but not entirely surprised, to realize just how much damage the accident had done to my body. Although I might appear to others to have overcome my injuries and emerged no worse for wear, the reality is that my body is still dealing with the aftermath, almost 11 months later.
In its wisdom, the body finds ways to compensate for injuries, but those adjustments can not only mask lingering weaknesses and movement problems, but cause additional dysfunction that compounds over time if not addressed. I know this too well from the damage I sustained between my first back surgery in 2018 and eventual spinal fusion three years later. It took four months of intensive physical therapy to even begin to unwind the misalignments.
One issue my current physical therapist identified I understand to be related to the Trendelenburg pattern, which occurs when the muscles that stabilize the pelvis and hips don’t adequately support the body during walking or when standing on one leg. This can cause the pelvis to drop on one side or the body to “lean” to compensate.
After pelvic fractures, these muscles may remain weak or have difficulty coordinating properly, even when the bones have largely healed. As a result, other muscles take on extra work, potentially leading to discomfort and altered movement patterns. In other words, just because I can walk without a cane doesn’t mean my body has completely returned to normal. The deep pelvic aches and sudden, sharp pangs I still experience when climbing stairs, walking on uneven terrain, or getting in and out of a tall vehicle are reminders that I still have limitations I’d like to overcome.
As I ended last week at a café on Wilson Boulevard with my fabulous friend J, with whom I served in Canberra several years ago and who was posted to Bangkok and a frequent visitor during my medevac hospitalization last fall, I felt a sense of gratitude and contentment. I’m doing my best right now, on all fronts, to take care of the things I’m here to do: learn Bosnian, improve my health, and stay connected to loved ones.
