This is an old post that I wrote years back that didn’t make the cut.  However, I re-read it and really liked where my heart was at with this one.  So I’ve decided to share it.  Hope it resonates…

I am finishing up my Spinal Cord Injury Rehab rotation this week.  We have been tasked with the final project of writing-up a patient’s story as it relates to their spinal cord injury (SCI) and adaptation to it.  I blog because I am totally incapable of doing justice to the assignment and cannot bring myself to start writing.  I interviewed one of the most inspirational people I have had the good fortune to meet in all of my patient encounters and feel that anything less than a literary masterpiece about this gentleman would be a total injustice.  In short, I spoke with a man who underwent an SCI rendering him a quadriplegic with limited use of his hands.  He went on to marry, raise children, ride motorcycles, shoot guns, live independently, and count his many blessings.  #winning

It conjurs up a conversation I had with a program director on one of my interviews.  She asked me about my thoughts on “resilience.”  How’s that for an open ended question!?  She also asked me what makes me resilient.  I went on to describe my support system– a rambunctious family that I just can’t kick– my ability to compose myself under pressure, a belief that nothing is as bad as it seems… etc.  I left the interview and thought a good deal more about resilience.  What I found was that I had confused coping with resilience.  And these are two very different things.  I am certain of it.  I think of coping as a verb, something one actively does or chooses to do to effectively react to and overcome a situation.  Resilience on the other hand is more of a noun, a trait that an individual posesses.  I think that many, many people suffer SCIs (and many of life’s travails for that matter) and cope just fine.  The patient I spoke with was unique in his resilience to his his injury.  It’s almost as if it never occurred to him that he would be less happy or less, well, anything.

I cannot help but wonder where resilience comes from, as I acknowledge freely that it is not a trait I readily posess.  I’m more of a coper.  Can a person have latent resilience?  Does it increase with age?  Or practice?  Is it related to a strong, abiding faith?  I suspect these things are true.  But I also suspect that deep in the heart of an individual is a prediliction for resilience or not, and that’s what you’ve got to work with.  My patient is an inspiration to me, and would be to you, I’m sure of it.  I think the coolest thing about him was the difficulty he had in describing what was wrong in his life and how readily he raved about all that was good.  SCI or no SCI, it is easy to get bogged down in what we would change about our lives.  It was refreshing to spend a few hours with somebody who was acutely aware of his blessings rather than shortcomings.