Decisions by Design | Edition 27

Not Dead. Not Done. 
EDITION | 27 

I broke my meat suit.

For someone who works in support of decisions for a living, I thought I'd made the right one. It nearly cost me my life.

On a sunny Tuesday morning, my husband handed me my coffee and announced that the last calf of the season had been born. The one I'd been waiting on.

My body said go. I put the cup back down and walked out to the pasture for a wellness check.

The calf was up, walking, well tended by its mother. I crouched at a distance to try to see whether it was a bull or a heifer.

That new momma, one of the sweetest in our herd, took one look at me and began to charge. Not out of malice, but motherhood. She knocked me to the ground. I curled into a ball, looking up at an underbelly and hooves that just kept coming.

Seconds, probably. It felt longer.

I heard the dogs barking and willed myself to my feet. I started walking. My daughter heard me and ran out to open the gate. My husband brought the truck. We called 911 and told them to have a trauma team ready. They sent an ambulance to meet me on the road.

Morphine. Ketamine. Badly bruised but not broken. Stitched up and sent home. A miracle.

Two days later I was back, and I stayed for six days. Long enough for them to name the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in my blood, remove the 45 stitches in my thigh, admit me to the OR to cut away the dead skin, manage the pain, and send me home wired to a wound vac so that I could begin to heal.

Trying to process the subtle gut punch of celebrating my daughter's sweet sixteen in the hospital where she'd been born instead of Ireland.

Now, there is one call I made that morning, and it's the one I refuse to be haunted by.

I left the dogs out. If I had penned them, the freak accident may never have happened. But I left them loose, and the truth is, they saved my life.

So the woman who has been lately examining the notion of sacred self-reliance was getting schooled by the land.

I was carried.

By the guardian dogs that held their ground. 

By strangers in scrubs.

By the incredible kindness and anticipated needs of my nurses.

By my family, responsive, frightened, but without judgment.

By friends who helped me laugh and let me cry.

By clients who gave me space and trusted me when I said I was ready to return to the work I love.

And by my fellow farmers who shared their own stories of what can happen when you let your guard down.

In a world where the line between technology and humanity blurs a little more every day, on that day, it was clear. Every single thing that saved me had a heartbeat.

Turns out, our newest little calf is a bull. Healthy and full-blooded, the one I'd been hoping for. I named him Angus Khan, because my wicked sense of humor is hoping he'll prove every bit as prolific as his namesake.

I'm not going to hand you a lesson. I don't have one yet, and I'd rather not pretend.

But here is what I know for now. As an entrepreneur, I built a life that runs on me. The work I love had to wait, and the people I love and serve held the door while I began to heal. 

So for now, I remain a student of the land, of Mother Nature, and of the folly of believing I can do anything alone.

With clarity and care, 

Courtney