This week was very special for me.
In September 2024 I had a silly accident while running. Silly in how it happened, not in what it did. It severely injured the ligaments of my right knee and, more seriously, my sciatic nerve. The most visible consequence was foot drop: the signals my brain sent to lift or turn the foot outwards never reached the muscle. They just stopped somewhere along the way. A shocking thing to experience in your own body.
I'd lie if I told you I handled it well. It was rough mentally. I could write a book about it, but the short version is this: the system that was supposed to diagnose me and point me towards solutions failed me. I'm someone who trusts systems. I follow medical advice. I soon realized I couldn't do that here. So I armed myself with ChatGPT, took inputs from various professionals, discussed next steps, and went through the tests it suggested. Two of them brought some light: an MRI and an electromyography. I still remember the words of the doctor in Spain who dared to name the severity: "move fast."
Move fast is exactly what a neurosurgeon in Berlin didn't want to do. The damage was 20 centimeters, she concluded, and I should just wait. Let nature do the job. That same afternoon we made the decision, and the surgery happened in Barcelona instead. The nerve had no continuity due to the overstretch, and the surgeon needed five hours to do a graft, taking another nerve from the back of my leg. The clinic is called Traumaunit, and I can't recommend them enough for peripheral nerve damage and trauma injuries.
I had a good night that day. Turns out fentanyl helps with the pain. The morning after, a doctor came to sign the discharge papers and said: we've done our job, and if it goes well, maybe in one year, or even more than two, you might recover the mobility.
Two years. I'm not used to that pace. But not everything moves at the speed of inference.
These have been the most mentally taxing years of my life. I wasn't prepared for it, and getting a company off the ground at the same time didn't help. I went through every emotion, from the duelo of "it might never come back" to the rabia of "why me." A lot of therapy kept me motivated and optimistic, but it was hard seeing people notice the disability, or constantly asking about it. I get it, they care. But part of you is doing the quiet exercise of accepting that this might be the new reality, and every question reopens it.
The daily work was mostly mental. My job was to keep the nerve receiving every kind of stimulation, texture, temperature, pressure, pain, while sending signals from the brain about a movement that didn't happen. I had to imagine it. Every single day. For a year and a half. The physios in Berlin had no idea what to do with a case like mine and didn't bother much to learn, so I kept digging myself, with ChatGPT as my research partner, learning which exercises had evidence behind them and pushing through even when nothing happened. The feeling on the side of my leg, which was also gone, slowly came back. So slowly that at times I wondered if I was imagining it.
Repeated checkups and electromyographies showed nothing. This time was different. The neurologist used needles to detect whether my brain's movement signals were reaching the muscle, and to my surprise, they did. I've never listened to a child's heartbeat for the first time, but that's how it felt. I could hear them beating. The graft had worked. My brain had not forgotten those movements. Now it's a matter of waiting a bit more, until more connections reach the muscle. I was speechless.
We run through life fast, thinking we're not vulnerable to this shit. But shit can happen to anyone, at any time. I'm still not fully recovered, physically or mentally, but I'm in a much better place thanks to the emotional support of friends, family, and my therapist.
Going through this taught me a few things. It taught me to trust myself, and how useful AI can be in that process. I don't know what I would have done otherwise, and that gives me confidence that I have tools to face whatever shows up next. It also taught me to slow down and be present. We are too busy, too distracted, too fast, and when life forces a slowdown on you, the inertia turns into anxiety and makes everything harder. A slower, more present self also means a clearer perspective to make decisions, something I struggled with at times.
I don't know if I'll get back to running. There was a second surgery I haven't talked about here, and a lot of work to do on the ligaments too. What I know for sure is that I'll walk. A lot, but a lot. I miss those long walks through Berlin and in nature. I've been waiting a long time for those to come back.