Why were my surgeries not all that painful? How did I never take a single pain med? How did I get up and walk a few hours post-op? How did I go home straight away, even walking myself out of the hospital after one surgery? How did I do two surgeries without any anesthesia? I asked these questions before anyone asked them of me because the moments were just as surprising to me as everyone else.
I’ve had plenty of surgeries before and used pain meds. Here I am giving birth, clearly in pain. My pain centers aren’t broken, I’m not a superhuman mutant of some sort, so what gives? The only answer I ever received, multiple times from multiple sources, was that I was an outlier. That to me signified being written off the scale of “normal”, that my experiences would forever be stuffed in a box of “not possible for anyone else” due to me being so different, not to be shared or up for consideration for “normal” people.
That is upsetting.
I am not an outlier, but my experience is certainly outside the average.
And, anyone can do this.
Anyone can achieve the same, even better, with their own use of tools paired with their unique life experiences. While our life experiences and perspectives are entirely individual, the tools can be the same. In fact, go develop better tools!
In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell comes to the conclusion that given the right chances, anyone can achieve what the so-called outliers have achieved. This is the place I am working from here, the word “chances” being replaced with “unique life experiences (positive and negative) paired with the right tools.” Even Gladwell ultimately concludes that…
The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
Some of my life experiences would be viewed as terrible, unfortunate, devastating – but they have all brought opportunity to grow and learn, so I am grateful for them all. Mindset and gratitude are key with how I view my experiences and allow them to be influencing factors in everything I do moving forward, especially nearly three years now of surgeries/recoveries/detours.
While I have dug into a sizable portion of my toolbox, I have more experiences and tools left to share. Despite being only partway through, I am writing this today because I want to set up the idea of considering whether my experience is that of an extreme outlier or if it is duplicable. I argue the latter. What do you think so far? Keep this in mind as I dig into the deeper parts ahead and let me know your thoughts.
Finally, please do not take my words to mean that I think my experience is superior, something everyone should strive for, or measure their own experience against. I present my experience as an example of what is possible in hopes of expanding what is then considered normal. When so-called impossible barriers are broken for the first time, many others quickly follow suit, it is the nature of humanity. The 4-minute mile barrier is the most famous example. Humans are on the brink of breaking the 2-hour marathon; watch how many others follow suit once that happens.
I feel that there is a narrow window of what is considered normal, and even acceptable, with surgeries and recoveries. I was told on repeated occasions that I “couldn’t do it that way because it has never been done before.” Or that to skip anesthesia during surgery would be “way too painful”, but if nobody has ever tried then how do you know? I hope to inspire others to rethink that and define their own experience, their own normal.
Make my “outlier” experience look boring.
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