096 PREVISUALIZATION

Almost from the day I got my walking cast on, I was previsualizing what would happen.  Just like I used to do before hockey games, when I would stand out by the rink and previsualize what was going to happen and what I was going to do.  It seemed to work well in game situations and I think I always played better when I did it.  I told anyone who would listen what was going to happen when I was given clearance for weight bearing.  I told my son, Karl about it and he paid me a great compliment by saying, “all good athletes do that”.  I thanked him for believing I was an athlete.

Anyway, I was lying in bed and was losing muscle mass by the minute, but I didn’t realize I was also losing fat, which was a good thing.  I kept saying that as soon as I could get up walking that my muscle mass would start to rebuild, because I would be up and walking around the hospital regaining my strength.  More on this, or at least the reality in another chapter.

I had numerous scenarios in my head of getting up and wandering around the hospital.  I did it after each of my three knee surgeries, so why should this be any different?  My Doctors, Nurses and Physiotherapists tried to tone me back a bit by telling me not to get too far ahead of myself.  Here I was breaking my cardinal rule of just living one day at a time.  Here I was thinking ahead.

No matter which scenario I went through, I visualized it to be a successful conclusion, with me getting up out of bed and immediately being able to walk around the hospital.  Maybe even outside, where I hadn’t been since July 8 and here it was late July.  I was figuring on being released by July 31 and putting an end to this lengthy three weeks stay in hospital.  Little did I know, this was a pipe dream at best.  I had no clue that I would be there for another 5 weeks.  Oh well, as they say, “ignorance is bliss”.

Meanwhile the days kept passing and the visitors kept coming.  I was using cellular data to access Facebook to keep up to date and post updates of my own.  Then suddenly I got a notice from Telus telling me I had burned through my “massive” 1 gig of data.  I had no clue about this either as I rarely ever use data.  Most of the time I’m connected to WIFI, either at home or the WIFI in my truck through OnStar.

Speaking of the truck, and possibly a premonition of what was coming.  When I headed up to the lake on June 22, I had my iPhone connected to the Apple play stereo I had installed in the truck earlier in the year.  I was listening to TSN 1040 the sports talk shows all the way to Kamloops.  On my old radio, the signal would die just before Chilliwack.

Just as I was making the turn off the highway on to the Yellowhead highway, on the last leg of the trip to Barriere.  I decided to switch to my music library on the phone.  I told Siri too play my music library shuffled.  The first thing out of the speakers was my Mother’s voice.  She said, “I just don’t know when I will be back from the lake this year”.  More prophetic words could not have been said, and it gave me chills to hear her voice, especially this close to the cabin.  Mom passed away in 1992.

The stranger part of this is that while I have several sound bytes of my Mother speaking, they are stored on my desktop computer at home and my laptop which was in the back of the truck and turned off.  There is not one sound byte from my Mother on my iPhone or iPad.  So where did the voice come from?  As I mentioned earlier, my Mother came to visit me when I was first brought into Kamloops Hospital.  So, here I was with absolutely no idea when I would be released from hospital and conversely, when I would be home from the lake.

The days continued to pass, and I continued to dream about getting out and getting home.  I expected to be weak and I expected to need rehab before I would be able to get back on the ice.  I even expected that I might end up missing a whole season, but it’s a little disappointing when the truth smacks you hard in the face.