Day 3
Pain, Policies, and Pivots
This morning, for the first time since the injury, I felt… maybe not “good,” but less scared. It was Day 2 after the hill sprint gone wrong, and I woke up braced for the same sharp pain behind my knee. But something had changed.
The pain wasn’t worse. In fact, it had eased. I could straighten the leg while lying down. My exercises—ankle pumps, heel slides, quad sets—felt smoother this time. I even skipped the Excedrin after the morning dose. The deep, dull ache was still there, especially when I flexed my foot up, but the edge had softened.
And then, just as I was beginning to feel cautiously hopeful, life threw another punch.
At 6 AM, I was easing into my workday—coffee in hand, emails flowing—when a Teams ping showed up from the assistant to the VP. Friendly tone. Unsuspecting message. Just a “quick call,” he said. We connected at 7:24 AM.
That’s when everything changed.
He told me that despite being told last month I could stay remote, the university was now saying that by July 1, I’d need to start reporting to the nearest campus in person. Just six weeks' notice. No policy document, no clear answers, just a vague reversal of everything I’d been told in April.
I felt blindsided.
My partner overheard the whole thing. She’s been through these back-office bureaucratic shifts with her job—she knew exactly what this meant. The infrastructure isn’t ready. The parking will be a mess. The internet will be overloaded. And for what?
For thirteen years, most of it a remote software engineer at MSU. I’ve documented systems, solved problems no one else could, and worked harder than I ever did in an office. Now, at 59, as I start planning for retirement, they want to flip my world upside down. Commute to Bozeman? Or some undefined office on UM’s campus? None of it makes sense.
The rest of the day, I kept up with my recovery plan—more icing, more elevation, more watching for setbacks. But honestly, my head wasn’t in it. The bigger injury wasn’t in my leg—it was in the way this news hit. The trust rupture. The loss of control over my future.
Still… maybe that’s what this week is really about. Learning to deal with things I can’t control. Healing what I can. And getting ready—physically and mentally—for whatever comes next.
Disclaimer: This post was created using real conversations, Ghibli-style illustrations of my injury saga, and AI-guided medical interpretation. Names and events are accurate, opinions are my own.