I don't know if there's an ideal time to break off your left foot. 

But I do know it's not a Saturday night at 9 p.m. 

On 1st of November, day after I’d flown non stop on Qantas Dreamliner, jetlag suddenly hit me, at 9pm. As I slipped down 2 carpeted steps, a massive crack reverberated around our living room. I knew it was my first ever broken bone. 

In fact, it turns out I had sheared off 3 bones, and basically my foot had broken off and it was hanging there, going black. Not kidding.

And then, I had to stay lying on the floor for an hour with no pain relief. All this accompanied by red and purple emergency lights flashing in my mind- because, I have synaesthesia, and so there are often times when I can suddenly see colours- but usually, I have to hear music.

In this case, I think it was shock - and I also was listening out for sirens, so I think I kept imagining the sounds (must have been F and G; purple and red).

Because the ambulance couldn't get to us, because they were too busy at 9 p.m. on a Saturday, and then, with them for another hour’s thankfully drugged but genuine agony going doing the final flight of steps …by now it was a bit urgent, but … in the meantime, Adelaide’s hospitals were all ramping, so, despite living 400 metres from a hospital, we had to drive 9 kilometres, to the wonderful Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woodville. 

So, much later I posted a rather shocked-looking selfie from hospital and amusingly, I happened to be wearing a T shirt from Australian Youth Orchestra - for whom I coach.

And the AYO reshared my post, and there was a great online audience, saying how terrible it was, and how sorry they were and how horrific it must have been, and how painful and digital flowers and hearts, and it was all really lovely. 

It was really nice of everyone, but it was also a little bit negative. 

I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could use my growth mindset? Which I use for coaching music, to gain some things out of this long process of rehab - which is going to take 12 months. Some good things had happened already, for example I endured an hour of extreme unmedicated pain, and survived, and felt a bit proud of myself for not fainting: that’s good.

Now, 10 months later, I've just done my 1st yoga class, which was my first Goal of rehab, so I'm reflecting on some of my learnings - and I want to give you 3 things that I've gained from breaking off my left foot. 

So, 1st one is empathy. 

I immediately gained an appreciation of other people's lives:

People with reduced mobility. 

People who are working really, really hard to care for others, and 

patients like the lady in the bed next to me, who have tripped over their cat in the garden, and smashed their whole leg, (the poor lady had to have her leg up in traction- at least mine was only lying on a foam pillow.)

And I’ve also been a target for empathy, especially later when a lady passing kneeled and blessed my walking frame, in Frome Street.

But suddenly I was vulnerable, with real mobility issues, and I started to empathise with people who notice how our pavements are actually not flat at all- wheelchair users, with pushchairs, walking frames, on crutches.

It also taught me to appreciate medical staff - how hard they are all working- the paramedics, nurses, surgeons, orderlies, occupational health teams and how continuous this process of emergency actually is, and they must be on high alert all the time. Under pressure. 

The 2nd thing that I learned was patience.
I'm normally a crazily busy person, but suddenly I was stuck, on a bed or a sofa, and I was relying on others to help me do things, at their speeds. 

And I had to slowly learn how to climb the stairs, living in a 4 storey townhouse…

Now, they wouldn't let me out of the hospital, until I'd done the staff stairwell twice, that’s 42 steps, one crutch using the handlebar of the stairs, and this was quite difficult learning to trust the foot again, now it had been screwed back on with a long metal bar and eight screws. 

During these few days in rehab I was surprising a lot of surgeons running up and down in the staff stairwell, (keeping up on their fitness levels or else, always in a hurry). They don't expect patients to be using the stairs, it’s normally the lift. 

(Especially, I suppose, the ones with broken ankles…) 

But eventually, I passed the test and I came back home again, where I had to learn to do things more slowly.

And so what’s the 3rd thing? Well, I finally found myself a good hobby, to fill in all those weeks lying on the sofa with my feet up. 

And this reminded me of a moment when I used to be at work in the orchestra and hobbies used to come up a lot in conversation, it’s basically a story about gardening…

So there was a moment, a few years back, (before I broke my left foot) when I was in the orchestra, with this lifetime experience of synaesthesia, which means that sometimes I do see bright colours instantly when a harmony changes. 

And in one particular piece, (Vaughan Williams 5), there's a particular chord, where I see a particular shade of green, when the chord is perfectly balanced. So I'm trying to rehearse this chord to imrorve it, because it was kind of spiky, and it was not quite in tune, in that nice, round, glassy green that I need. 

(And it's because of the Flute Player. And so, I'm trying really hard, to be tactful)... thinking to myself, the thing is, the median note of the harmony, no, it's just too loud, it's just not blending, and it just, it's just … and what I actually said was… it's just not green enough!

Flute player storms out. 

And soon, I'm alone in a dark empty studio until some nice colleagues come back, and they take me out for a drink, and they say, you should get a hobby.  

Have you tried gardening? 

So, that was the third thing that I learned. A suitable hobby is very calming. I don’t like gardening, (but if you do, great)- a real hobby gives you a rest from from the AI slop.

I discovered jigsaw puzzles, and I did a really difficult complicated one of Queen Elizabeth (a tribute to the lovely people at the Hospital in Woodville.)

And you're thinking to yourselves, I can hear you thinking…

So what's in this for me? 

Well. I'd like to summarise these 3 lessons that I learned from my growth mindset. 

One: Empathy, 

Two: Patience

And the 3rd - get a hobby, switch your brain off. Relax. 

And the main thing for you: you won’t need to break off your left foot to find these things out.