Losing yourself and surviving

"You will never play Rugby again.."

In my head, these words were heard as "Your life is over, get fuk't idiot."

When your identity is singular faceted as mine once was and then taken from you by a 60 year old douchebag Doctor, a gaping chasm forms there instead.

I suppose I should explain why the 60 year old douchebag Doctor was douchebag Doctor, but for the flow of this blog we'll go back a bit further.

I was born on the 21st of April of a year (D:) and fuck that I'm not going this far back.
I come from a family of avid rugby players and motosport enthusiasts, so you could say I was born into rugby regardless of me being late to start playing it. I was 13 when I first got bit by the rugby bug, so in South Africa this would be the first year of high school.

I could go into deeper detail about my rugby experiences and stories, but I think to keep this relatively short we'll just skip to my last year in this high school. So, for 5 years I'd been playing this sport and 2 of them were for the First team. It was during these 5 years that I discovered my true desire in life and didnt bother too much with the education part of schooling, this desire was to become a semi-professional rugby player, in essence this means I'd play at the Provincial level instead of International, as even then I was a realist and knew I was not good enough to make it to this level. Over the course of these 5 years I had obviously been injured, but never enough to take me out of the sport for longer than 2 - 3 months, which at this stage in my life I realise were in fact a long fucking period of time.

So, 2012.. My last year of high school and the year before I could apply and enter tertiary level education, but more importantly, University level rugby. In South Africa, Grade 12 is your final year in high school (did I mention this before?) and students in this grade are known as Matriculants and your final exams at the end of the year are called your Matric exams. They constitute 75% of this year's final result and therefore, are extremely stressful to us Matriculants.

So its October, Matric exams are around the corner and I'm studying my ass off, but obviously, I'm also exercising and keeping fit for the rugby the following year. At that point, I was doing an exercise called shoulder press (take note of appendix A) with low weights and high repetitions, during this exercise I felt a click in my back. Now, you might be thinking, "Wait Mbison, I stretch out my body and experience clicks all the time. What the problem is?" Well, you incredibly intelligent individual, the difference is that this click ruined my fucking life D:

I went to my dad almost immediately as I was lowkey in some pain /: and he just advised taking a break from exercising for a short period of time, which was the usual and correct advise. Over the following 2 weeks, my pain went from lowkey to I legitimately cannot walk faster than my grandmother with 4 seperate iron joints (she is the true Ironwoman).
My mother took me to my physiotherapist - she is awesome and there will be way more on her in the future, who had been my physio for over 6 years. So my physio told me that the exercise I did should not have caused this level of pain or the mess that my back muscles were in, she advised we go to a neurosurgeon, as she thought this would be our best bet at finding a quick resolution. I mean, matric exams were 2 weeks away and I could not even sit for longer than 10 minutes before nearly crying in pain and bro, I never cried.

And enter Doctor Douchebag, the greatest neurosurgeon in South Africa but the bedside manner of a lamppost. So, Doctor Douchebag emphasized several points during our appointment, namely: a young man of 18 does not have this level of pain without an accident or attempting to avoid their matric exams; a young man of 18 who has played rugby should have a pain tolerance high enough that slight back spasms should not affect him as badly as these do; finally and in these exact words "We'll send you for an MRI, but I know it will show nothing so its just a waste of money." TLDR: Mbison, you're lying and now you've cost your family 8 grand for an MRI.
Due to the lack of time before matric exams started, the doctor organised the MRI for the same day. So, now extremely pissed off and ready to smash Doctor Douchebag's 60 year old bitch-ass into a coma, I went for the MRI. If you have never been for a MRI before, I will let you know you have to lay dead ass still and hardly breathe for the MRI to be quickly. Now, I'm in such pain that it is forcing me to consistently move about.. I'm in an MRI machine that needs me to not move and Doctor Douchebag didn't tell them to give me a sedative.. -Insert slow clap meme here-
Do you want to know what the MRI showed, do you really? I think you can guess.. That's right.. 5 fucking slipped discs with one slightly pressing on the spine.. We discovered this at 17:00, guess what time Doctor Douchebag went home for the day.. Thats right.. 17:00.. Do you think he waited for my MRI becuase I was faking pain.. Of course fucking not..
The fucking Doctor still makes my blood boil, the following morning at 06:00 the cunt phones my mom to tell her that she needs to come pick up the note excusing me from exams and a prescription of morphine-level drugs.
Did Doctor Douchebag apologise? HELL NO.. Did Doctor Douchebag tell me my life was over? Might as well have, the bastard.

This was going to be a blog on how to find yourself after losing yourself, but I've got to be honest friends, I haven't the slightest clue how I did it.. All I know is if you want to follow my story then be sure to check abck every day, as I'll post then.

Here is a cute picture I drew (Note Appendix B)

Appendix A:

Appendix B: