Keep Hopping On
No matter what
I had clumsily twisted my ankle the day prior in a racquetball incident, resulting in a non-displaced fracture of my medial ankle. I was there cause the doctor’s office gave me a boot to wear, but were out of crutches my size; just tally it up as yet another negative life event for me I guess.
I walked into the medical supplies building with a limp, a defeated demeanor, and paper script with the simple word CRUTCHES in bold written on it. Just as I was beginning to feel a sense of control back onto my life, I get thrown another curve ball. Medical school isn’t easy, of course, but never had I failed an exam until recently. Drowning in the thoughts of my greatest insecurities flooded my mind, sending me down the abyss rabbit hole of imposter syndrome. On top of this, failure to complete nearly every fitness goal I had set for myself in 2022 left my mood lousy, energy depleted, and mind malleable to these outside stressors.
The women who took my script was short, smiley, but not too bubbly and a sternness that seemed to have been built up over years of witnessing hardship, as to empathize with costumers. Everyone she sees is going through medical issues they didn’t ask for, they were all going through it, after-all.
Behind her desk on a shelf sat multiple stuffed frogs. Some big, some small, each with caricatured eyes and enlarged hind legs highlighting their archetypal ability to leap bounds and leaps. Some were green, some red, and they all encircle a giant sign that hung one word: hop.
Out of a plea to turn the subject away from the real reason of my visit, I asked “Are those your frogs? Do you like them?”
“I’ve had 4 types of cancers”, she replied matter-of-factly, not taking her eyes off her computer screen.
“For years I battled different cancers and treatments”, she continued, “and my friends used to say that no matter what, I would always just keep hopping. I didn’t give up and now I’m 3 years remission.”
“Wow” was all I could finally exclaim after retrieving my jaw from the floor. I was in awe, nothing about our short conversation or her presentation told me of her resistance to hardships. But the battlegrounds she had traversed were unimaginable to me, while I sat there pouting over an ankle injury and some bad grades. The pain from my foot miraculous presented in my heart listening to her simple motto.
“So I love this job”, see followed up, “because I meet people who are not doing too well, and I give them little frogs to remind them that no matter what, you have to keep going, to keep hopping forward.”
That little frog gift hasn’t left my sight since I limped out of that medical supply building with my new crutches. The pain is still there, the sense of defeat hasn’t gone anywhere, and my problems are not any closer to being solved. She put my own life into perspective, not comparing an ankle injury to cancer, but rather how her wisdom can help me, reminding me we push past simple adversities. That in bleak times, we only have one choice: keep hopping on.
