Rosemary McKenzie-Ferguson – My Way
An unexpected journey really did happen – not the Hobbit type of journey but the Rosemary type of journey.
Oddly enough as with Bilbo Baggins, I was also a reluctant participant.
My journey has split my life in two sections- there is my life as it was before my workplace injury and then my life after my injury.
Before injury
Pre-injury I – Rosemary McKenzie-Ferguson – had a very quiet life (not as ordered as a Hobbits life); I had a family, 2 cats and a dog, as well as a back yard chook yard. I sat on school committees and was involved with my children’s sports and basically just living a normal suburban life and building “the dream” the life post children leaving school and before being too old too this too that too something else.
Then my workplace injury happened and in less than the blink of an eye life as I knew it came to an end.
I won’t dwell on the incident as to be honest I really don’t need to relive it again.
What I will tell you is that I never experienced such blinding pain and such a toxic feeling of fear. Over the years I have tried to understand it, I have tried to explain it and I have tried to forget it. Now I just live with it in a never-ending dance that is at times frenetic and at other times oddly normal.
After injury
Post injury my life became a living nightmare or fear, addiction to prescription medication, and endless downward spirals.
Decide the path to take
At a point I knew I had to decide the path to take. Let me pause here, path taking is not as easy or as glamorous as it is portrayed to be. There are no signposts, there is no guru there is nothing that appears with a signpost pointing in “that” direction. And in many ways (with the benefit of hindsight) I did not make the choice, it was made for me and I went along as the unwilling reluctant student.
During the first 5 years I met people who had also been injured at work, a pattern started to form, I started to ask questions and I was more than frustrated because the answers I was getting did not match what I was seeing. This is where the choice really does come in. At the point I had two choices: walk away and say “that sucks” or stand and learn and fathom out what the conundrum in front of me really was.
I have never been good at walking away, I knew too much to do that, but I didn’t know enough to make a stand.
There are no university courses that I could sign up for to teach me what I wanted to know and the truth is I didn’t have any idea just what it was that I wanted to know.
