Benjamin Gozzi - 2/28/25

2/28/25: The story of my most difficult, yet growth-filled year yet

On Feb. 28, 2025, I fainted off the sidewalk outside of my apartment and shattered my jaw in three places. While nursing a triple mandible fracture wasn't the best way to spend a spring semester at Virginia Tech, the entire experience gave me a level of clarity and a perspective that I'm so grateful to have to this day.

The following story changes the narrative from tragedy to triumph. My recounting of the last 365 days is unflinching, raw and filled with anecdotes from what's easily been the most challenging year of my life.

Thank you to those who pushed me to see my recovery through and to those who quietly inspired this work.

TW: discussions of severe injury, including blood and damage; mental health; various graphic images pertaining to recovery.

Everybody should break their jaw.

That’s kind of a harsh way to start my story. I don’t say that in malice or from some point of deep-rooted hatred towards anything. I’m not saying you should go out and actively seek opportunities to smash your face in. Trust me, I’m like, the world’s biggest advocate against that.

I say that everyone should break their jaw more in a sense that you learn a lot about yourself when you’re stuck with yourself. Repetitive, yes, but it’s true.

On February 28th, 2025 - one year ago to the day, in case you weren’t already aware - I shattered my jaw in three places, earning myself a triple mandible fracture. No, I did not get in a bar fight. No, I’m not that clumsy. And no, I didn’t do it on purpose. Someone asked me that once.

My story is unlike any other, so I figured I’d throw some of my journalism skills into a tell-all about the last 365 days of my life. They haven’t been easy, but it’s a story that I’ve wanted to tell - the complete version - for so long. And on what’s undoubtedly my most significant milestone, it feels as if there’s no better moment to start.

–

Funnily enough, the spring semester of my sophomore year was actually going REALLY well before I decided to turn into the personification of Humpty Dumpty himself. I was in the second semester of my internship at Virginia Tech Athletics, and with the daunting five-day regiment of marching band left to the memories of the fall, I was all in. I worked basketball games, learned more about social media, and wrote with a fervor that I’ve continued to hold in the same role. And I was getting paid? I was winning like crazy.

The Friday that I fell actually started like any other day in the spring semester of my sophomore year. Fridays were nice because I only had one class that day, that being my Business Calculus lecture at 10 a.m. The end of the week would mark the fourth time I’d been in a math setting over the business week that spring, serving as an evil conclusion of three classes and a Tuesday recitation.

I clearly remember bouncing out of Whittemore 300 after the day’s lesson concluded and throwing my car in drive as I coasted to 7Brew in Christiansburg. Who knows what possessed me to listen to Nicki Minaj as I drove down South Main en route to the coffee shop, but in personal research for this piece (also known as scrolling through my camera roll) I found a screenshot of the song from 12:05 p.m. that afternoon.

The day was already going well when I got my drink and continued to improve as I prepared for my academic fraternity’s formal that evening. I remember coming home and instantly getting to some homework for my online class (Language of Visual Arts, I think) before eating a later lunch.

I could probably tell you the exact moment when I realized something was wrong that afternoon. After finishing some assignments for the aforementioned online class, I remember feeling REALLY nauseous, so I scurried to my apartment kitchen and made a 3 p.m. bowl of pasta. I felt better, but downing what felt like a metric ton of water with my meal regulated my system.

Some time passed and I began to get ready for the formal. My plan was relatively simple: At 5 p.m., take a shower, get the clothes on, comb your hair, throw some deodorant on and get out the door no later than 5:45 p.m. that same evening. All but one of those to-do list items happened (guess which one didn’t).

The nausea from earlier hit me like a speeding freight train when I started getting ready. I have a door-length mirror hanging on the entryway to my room, and I remember SO vividly staring at my reflection as I tried to tie my tie and I just…couldn’t. There are a lot of mysteries to this entire situation, and that was definitely one that continues to hang with me even today. Why could I not tie my tie? “I’ve done this a million times,” I probably thought to myself. Immediately, I pulled over to my bedside desk chair and sat in front of my already-oscillating fan. I grabbed our apartment’s communal Brita and, like a couple hours prior, drank the thing dry.

My stubbornness unfortunately overruled the lightheadedness I now suddenly had. "Just get to the car and turn the air conditioning on,” I thought. “You just need some more cool air.”

Except I never made it to the car. At least, not on my first attempt. I mention this because I was retelling the entire story to my roommates the other night and they were both floored when I talked about this part. There’s a set of stone steps that lead down to our front door on the first floor, and it was there that I actually just…laid down. For like, a good ten minutes. I put my neck on the stair itself and just stared straight into the ceiling above me as my vision was fading in and out of brightness.

The stubbornness would go on to win against my own health once again after my meeting with the stairs. If you’ve ever seen Interstellar by Christopher Nolan, you know that one scene where Matthew McConaughey’s character is banging on the bookcase, warning his past self to not leave his daughter for deep space exploration? That’s kind of what happened here…minus the space part.

I’d get up from the stairs and try to walk to my car, but my reposturing literally sent my body into some kind of shock. And off the very small, but also shockingly high sidewalk ledge that hugs my apartment building, I’d fall smooth off.

February 28, 2025, 5:34 p.m. That was when my life changed.

Now, the weirdest - and maybe the most confusing - part of this whole experience is my level of consciousness throughout this whole in-the-house-to-Brita-chugging-to-stair-nap-to-falling fiasco. I was awake for everything EXCEPT the fall. As a faithful person, I really do think God was looking out for me on this part, I can’t even lie.

I was out for two minutes. Even as I type this a year later, I can’t put the feeling of waking up into words. I was petrified. Scared. Cold…like, REALLY cold. For a 60-something degree day, it felt like I stepped into mid-January Wisconsin. My legs were uncontrollably shaking (more on that later), and my brain was completely blank.

As one could likely imagine, my jaw was SHATTERED. While I didn’t know to what extent, I knew something was wrong simply because I had never seen so much goddamn blood in my entire life (I’m sorry if you’re squeamish). Blood was pouring out of nearly every above-neck orifice. My mouth was like an undammed river, my nose was throbbing and my chin was practically sliced open.

It felt like someone had taken one hundred full-strength sledgehammer swings into every corner of my mouth. When I really came to, I actually thought I was chewing on rocks that I had somehow gathered from the rather cold pavement I found myself upon. I later learned that those were not rocks, and rather parts of my very, very broken back molars. Ouch!

Thank God my roommates - and the upstairs neighbor who found me sprawled out on the pavement - were home. Panic for them ensued pretty quickly, as my roommates very quickly ran into the house to grab pillows and call emergency services. God, the poor Blacksburg Rescue Squad students who came to get me. If I could have laughed, I would have. They looked frazzled, from what I remember. After they hoisted me into the ambulance, they had to cut up my suit (had to trash that one, which sucked) to make sure I wasn’t hurt anywhere else. Imagine their faces when they saw my chest, the same one that has worn a pectus excavatum crater like a badge of honor for my entire life. They probably thought I got hit by a cannonball or something.

I remember thinking three things on the ambulance ride there: SCREW THIS, I’m never going to play saxophone again and I wonder how quickly my parents can get here.

We pulled into the LewisGale Montgomery emergency bay and I was instantly brought to a waiting room. That place - and the hospital I’d later be transferred to in Salem - was like a set for The Walking Dead. Sickness was all over both places, but since I was HURT, I got priority. “This sucks,” I typed on my phone’s Notes app as I showed it to my roommates, who had trailed the ambulance all the way to the first hospital. They shared a laugh that sounded more like one of those “This isn’t real life” chuckles than actually laughing at the joke.

The third of my three questions was answered in what felt like mere minutes. My angel parents made it to Montgomery by driving what I can only assume to be a law-breaking speed from Richmond. I remember my dad going “Oh, MAN!” and laughing when he first saw me, and he’d later tell me that he only did that because it was that or crying. My mom was crying, but at that point, I think I was too.

That evening, I underwent a CT scan - and vomited around two liters of previously swallowed blood - and was eventually transferred to the LewisGale Salem hospital 45 minutes down the road from Blacksburg. I remember thinking my EMS chaperone was a complete JACKASS because he looked at me, blood stained all over my everything, and he asked me if I had a girlfriend and if I was doing well in school. He was talking to me like I hadn’t just had a personal meeting with my apartment’s parking lot. (Looking back, kind of a funny move to act like nothing happened.)

Texting people that evening was a hurdle. I was honest with those who I knew I was going to be seeing, like class friends and fellow interns, and more detailed with those who I knew weren’t going to be seeing me due to distance or varying factors. I remember laughing at what three of my closest hometown friends texted me that evening and being surprised that I could actually laugh with a completely smashed face.

Joy persisted even in the worst moments that night. I played Kanye West’s “Through the Wire” - because that song was literally my anthem - when I learned I’d be wired shut for six excruciating weeks at 2 a.m. the same day. I laughed and cried with my family, including my sister, who drove down from Charlottesville to be with me on my worst day.

I don’t think I slept much the night before my wiring surgery. If I had known I’d have three more surgeries over the course of the four months that followed, maybe I would’ve tried to close my eyes more than I did on my very small emergency bed.

And so, at 7:30 a.m. on March 1, 2025, I’d undergo wiring surgery. Fun fact: If you smash your face in, you get moved to the top of the next day’s operations. Score!

I give my sister a lot of credit for being a great photographer...especially at this moment.

I don’t think I’ve told many people this, but I actually wanted to strangle the doctors in the operating room. Not all of them, but one lady in particular. Recall: I’m uncleaned, blood-stained, and genuinely living the worst day of my life. And here comes this doctor, who looks at me and, I shit you not, goes, “This really isn’t that bad.”

She would go on to explain how her sister - and I really wish I was making any of this up - got kicked in the face by a startled horse and had to get her jaw wired some years prior. You know those moments in life where someone is just telling you something, and it’s so unbelievable that you don’t even know how to react? Imagine that, but tenfold. MIND YOU, this was maybe thirty seconds before the most intense dose of anesthesia I’ve ever felt washed over my body and knocked me out.

I was clamped when I woke up, unable to speak or open my mouth or jaw. Unnerving, as one could guess. And it hurt BAD. I’ve been injured plenty in my life - broken arm when I was much younger, a handful of sprained ankles here and there - but the pain I felt after waking up from what was a four-hour surgery was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It was one of those moments where you’d say “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy!” and it actually ends up being true. The pain in those moments is something that I wish no one - not even my theoretical enemies - would have to endure.

---

For the next week, I’d take permanent residence in the ICU of LewisGale Salem. It was a quiet room, barring the occasional beeping of medical equipment and the shuffle of the surrounding residents checking in at other rooms, but nothing felt quiet when my head was screaming in pain. I was confident that there was a non-zero chance I concussed myself with my fall (turns out I did not) simply based on the five-day headache that came with every other ailment of mine.

My saving grace in these moments? Drugs. And lots of them.

Maybe the worst LinkedIn headshot of all time.

I lived in a constant state of uncomfortable euphoria for the week I stayed in the hospital. A vicious cocktail of oxycodone, morphine, ibuprofen and a blood pressure medication was pumped intravenously through my left arm at nearly all times. When the attending doctors would change the liquid bags and secure a connection with new medication, I’d experience this overflowing rush all through my body that at first was entirely uncomfortable but became a much-needed vice throughout the night.

The five-day hospital experience was one that brought me and my family closer together, for better or worse. I was a shell of myself - they had to help me clean my body, stand up (without fainting), use the restroom and even convince me to speak when I didn’t want to. There was one doctor who refused to give me anything unless I spoke to her and asked for assistance - in a twisted way, I actually appreciated her more than anyone on that hospital staff because she forced me to recover. And she was definitely better than the attending nurse who tried to stick a thermometer in my mouth on the fourth day. I’ve never seen my mom that mad in my entire life.

Besides the time in which I simply laid on the emergency bed and closed my eyes to rest, I actually stayed relatively busy. I rifled through sudoku books and puzzles, a measly yet surprisingly effective method to distract myself from what was a less-than-optimal situation. In between my workbooks, my business-oriented parents helped me craft emails to professors and club leaders and generally assisted in communicating with anyone who would notice my absence. Formatting and reformatting that email was a trivial task, simply because I never really found the answer to the question of “How do you tell someone you’re in the hospital for something like this?” My mom helped me find the solution.

Eventually, the physical side of my condition became less of a focus compared to the mental side of things. I had a doctor ask me much later on at what felt like the 74th appointment if I had ever felt like there was no way out (taking a turn here, but it’s true) in my life, and for the very first time, I had an answer that wasn’t “No” or “I’ve never felt that way.”

My dad, man. I don’t know what it was, but he became a soundboard for every negative thing I ever thought during my time at Salem. “I can’t go on like this,” I wrote to him that week, pleading for an end. “I am tired and frail and ready to give up.” I’d ask him about this months later and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way he told me how nervous he was for me. He’d also become my biggest advocate for therapy, something that I took full advantage of in the summer between sophomore and junior year.

I was in a dark place. Feeling so weak physically snowballed into feeling mentally weak, and I permitted any dark thought to persist because I truly didn’t have the strength to fight it.

EVENTUALLY, I was permitted to be discharged from Salem, but not before I proved that I could stand and walk without fainting or see a significant spike in my heart rate. The lap I took around the ICU felt like I ran a marathon.

And then, 24 hours later, I was in Richmond, crying myself to sleep listening to Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” record.

And then, 12 hours later, I was in the hospital again. That was actually so ridiculous.

---

To not confuse the timeline of things, I was in the hospital from February 28 to March 5. I made it home on the evening of the 5th, and I slept that night. After I showered the next morning, I fainted and my vision went white. That was around 9 a.m. on March 6th.

So after begging to be away from the hospital, I found myself back in one, except the building was in my hometown. Ironic. Comedic. Kind of stupid. The visit was actually hysterical, because the lady next to me was genuinely SCREAMING about something I can’t even remember. I just remember my mom, dad and I laughing to the point of tears - it was a much needed laugh after the week I had just been through.

Being home was a unique experience that I don’t think I fully took for granted. Expectedly, I was so ready to move on from this chapter of my life that I kept looking to the future for some kind of temporary solace. I’d be bedridden for most, if not all of my week at home (hell of a way to spend a college spring break), only ever getting up for the temporary bathroom run or a shower.

Medicine was always the trickiest part and something I never fully wanted to surrender to. Since I obviously wasn’t able to chew with the condition I was in, all of my medicine - including ibuprofen, blood pressure regulators, and pain treatment - was in liquid form, only ever ingested from a comically large syringe that was washed daily. I took the medicine at three different times throughout the day, first starting at 8 a.m. and cycling in four-hour intervals until the afternoon.

Supplementing the medicine was a vast array of protein smoothies, protein juices and the occasional milkshake. Nowadays, I can barely look at Premier Protein smoothies (especially the chocolate peanut butter variety) because I can’t stomach the taste anymore. Those drinks were the only thing that would go down with a wired jaw. The worst part about the entire experience with those godforsaken drinks was the fact that the protein was never really fully blended. Hence, I spent weeks with a filmy, chunky protein sediment buildup on the roof of my mouth. I got used to it after a while, but there were days that I seriously debated grabbing some pliers and getting the gunk out myself.

In many of the aforementioned emails I had sent during my hospital visit, professors responded back with plenty of words of kindness and well wishes for what was a lengthy recovery to come. I clearly remember my advisor, however, sending me a link to the absence verification request form through the Dean’s Office. My situation became a little more real - if it wasn’t already - when I realized I had to still be a student after all this. And truthfully, can I be faulted? Tech and my studies were the last thing on my mind after my injury.

Gross.

Hi, mom!

I’m not gonna say it was a coin flip, but I was dangerously close to saying “I’m good!” and taking the rest of the semester as a withdrawal. There was a way I could’ve still graduated on time and been able to clean up the back half of my spring classes before I would walk the stage.

Yet, in all honesty, what good was that going to do? Would I just sit on my ass for two more months, coast into summer and come back in the fall like I hadn’t missed a ridiculous amount of time and schoolwork?

And so, under the very watchful eye of my parents and a host of doctors and professors, I came back to Blacksburg.

My mom stayed with me for the first week after spring break, which also happened to be the first week back on campus. That was a…peculiar time. I mentioned how I told the people close to me about my injury, but I realized VERY quickly that there’s a massive difference between telling someone that an injury happened and seeing the injury play out in real time. I don’t blame people for the way they reacted when they first saw me - I was a mess (and also growing a beard) - and people truly did not know what to say. It didn’t make it better that I continued to stay on my syringe-ingested medicine. Whipping the giant orange vial out in the middle of class was definitely one of the weirdest parts of recovery.

Instead of chocolate peanut butter smoothies from Premier Protein, it was now Jamba smoothies from the basement of the Turner dining hall. Like clockwork, I’d be walking in when they opened to collect my large Peanut Butter Moo’d smoothie, made with a scoop of nondescript whey protein. “Please blend extra - recovering from jaw surgery” took permanent placement in the “Have any additional comments?” bar on the Grubhub app.

Coming back to Tech also came with its own unique host of doctors appointments in and out of Salem. Recall that my legs were uncontrollably shaking when I had fallen - telling the doctors of this when I have a very complicated history with epilepsy basically made everyone think I had a seizure when I fell (For context, I had a seizure in eighth grade and quickly earned an epilepsy diagnosis after a brief stay in the hospital.)

But then there was the fact that I couldn’t stand without my heart rate hitting just shy of 200 beats per minute. With that in mind, a healthy dose of rhetoric pertaining to POTS - postural tachycardia syndrome - became the more supported reason for my fall. I knew very little about the diagnosis, but at the time, the idea held much more significant weight than an epilepsy comeback. While I never was officially diagnosed, symptoms continued to persist long into the spring semester, seeing as I’d be out of breath and averaging 170 beats per minute as I walked to the bus each morning.

The cardiologist was also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He gave me plenty of strength to keep pushing when he told me that I was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met given the fact that I couldn’t eat or drink. I also liked him much more than my neurologist, who was so convinced that I had a seizure that he tried to put me on the medicine I had taken for my seizure for five long years. My mom and I walked out of that appointment and laughed because he had whatever the opposite of bedside manner is.

Escaping the spring semester of my sophomore year took a level of mental, physical and emotional fortitude that I don’t know if I’ll ever reach again in my lifetime (and I still made Dean’s List, suckers.) I of course had to walk everywhere on Tech’s larger-than-life campus, and because I wasn’t gaining the calories back from typical meals, the weight dropped…and it dropped quickly. 175 pounds turned into 133 FAST.

The two months after spring break were relatively uneventful once I settled into a routine that now featured a lot less talking and a lot less eating than I was used to. Biggest changes include finally getting the wires out of my mouth (a bloody, painful nightmare) and replacing them with rubber bands for slightly more movement, and eventually getting those out when the weather started to get warmer. When I realized I could massage Panera mac and cheese into my mouth once everything was clear, I cried.

On the topic of mac and cheese: I have never, in my entire 21 years of living, consumed so much goddamn mac and cheese. Any type, any flavor, any brand, and it was in my possession. A clear cut favorite established itself at Chick-Fil-A, not just because it was delicious but because I could order it when I stepped off the HWB bus next to Perry Place on campus. There were often days where my Grubhub ticket would read “3x Mac and Cheese” - I can’t imagine being the worker who had to pack those orders.

I also had a surgery on April 10th to get what I always called the “gear” out of my mouth and jaw. Don’t ask me how the doctors did it, but I had dime-sized metal clamps attached to the top and bottom of my gums put in during the wiring surgery, and they were still around even after the wires and bands did their time. That surgery was back in LewisGale Salem, which kind of made everything feel a little full circle. I had to be at the hospital at 4 a.m. for that one - that surgery was more of a nuisance than anything.

It took very little time after my wiring and gear surgeries to realize that more than just the jaw was damaged. I had always secretly felt like my teeth were severely impacted, especially after the whole “chewing rocks” feeling eventually led to such significant pain on both sides of my mouth.

On May 11, my theory was proven correct. On a call with my mom and dad (who were both back home at this point), I peered into my bathroom mirror and angled my jaw and mouth just enough to really see into my mouth. I was greeted with a host of broken molars. Shocked, yet wholly vindicated is the best way I could describe that sensation. I panicked, of course, but my family was about to come get me to drive me back home later that week. We’d handle the cosmetic stuff when I was back home for the summer.

July was cosmetic surgery month. Early in the month, I was back under the needle for the third time as the surgeons removed fragments from my fractured morals and placed temporary crowns on the impacted teeth. Three weeks later, I’d get permanent crowns.

On top of a fixed front tooth and a four-inch metal strip in my chin, I now had the final cosmetic adjustments with three permanent crowns.

And then physical therapy started getting weird.

This was SUCH a weird realization. Seeing my molars slashed down the middle - on BOTH sides of my mouth - made every unexplainable tooth pain a little more explainable.

In past experiences, physical therapy is something that I actually grew to like when I injured myself. I was never good at soccer, and in the five seasons I played when I was much younger, I sprained my ankle in five consecutive years. Twice I sprained my left and three my right, so physical therapy was something that I was accustomed to. Physical therapy for a broken jaw, however, was something I could never really wrap my head around. Do you just open your mouth a bunch of times, over and over, until you’re healed?

More or less, actually. I first started physical therapy for my three jaw fractures when I was still at Tech in the spring, attending CORA Physical Therapy down South Main near the Sheetz twice a week. It’s tucked amongst an assembly of rentable townhouse-esque buildings, and it was a place I was never fully confident in getting to even after visiting a handful of times. At physical therapy - I’ll call this CORA Blacksburg for efficiency - many of my visits were actually for my back. Unsurprisingly, it was more than just my jaw that was affected by my fall, as various sections of my back were impacted by all 6-foot-1 of me unconsciously slamming the ground.

Unbeknownst to me, CORA was a nationwide physical therapy provider, something that was of huge help when I relocated back home for the summer. I started visiting CORA Richmond every so often, regularly performing the same back exercises alongside a plethora of jaw work that was much more than just opening my mouth over and over.

Imagine your face uncontrollably twitching for ten minutes straight. That's what this experience was. I got through it, yes, but what a WEIRD time.

The real kicker, however, was the beginning of every visit. While I don’t remember what convinced me to consent to this, I started getting acupuncture directly into my jaw at the start of each appointment. For about ten minutes, I’d have eight to 10 needles inserted into various parts of my jaw, which would then send electrical impulses through a charge and directly to my face. To say this was a new experience would be the understatement of my life.

Acupuncture was never something I really got used to, but I REALLY became accustomed to the way I felt after. Something about “waking up” my jaw through the electricity actually put a spark back into the fractures, and I always felt incredibly sore but consistently more mobile after each visit. The cost of the acupuncture was normally a slight bit of anxiety and a shirt drenched in sweat, but the pros most definitely outweighed the cons.

I wrapped up my visits to CORA Richmond the week prior to returning to Blacksburg this past fall. The feeling of accomplishment to have completed my visits at physical therapy gave me much-needed momentum into the fall semester, and I drove back to Tech feeling well-rested and on a consistent path to long-term recovery.

As many know, I turn into a bonafide band kid in the fall semesters at Tech, grabbing my saxophone and taking the field with the Marching Virginians marching band alongside 350 dedicated student musicians. However, as one could likely guess, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I was to be playing my instrument after my injury. And so, under the direction of our band directors, I became a media assistant of sorts for the marching band.

I have nothing bad to say about my experience with the band this past semester. I was fortunate that a position even opened for me to have this kind of opportunity to capture and create media for the band, and I will forever be grateful for the acceptance I felt even as I wasn’t fully playing my instrument. I was plagued, however, by an innate sense of jealousy for the entire season. And realistically, how could I not have? Many of my best friends were out on the field making music and memories, and I never had the opportunity to do so. We played a host of outstanding shows last year, and those are compositions that I’ll never have the chance to play again with other members of the band.

I also surfed various waves of loneliness throughout the marching season, many of which happened much later on as the temperature began to dip. I can clearly remember standing under our pavilion and listening to the musicians on the field in late November, feeling a world away even though physically I was maybe 30 steps from our practice field. Telling the story of why I was out also got old really quick, since most conversations followed a pretty typical formula of “Oh my goodness! Are you okay now?” after explaining what happened. There was never enough time in the world to sit down with someone and say, “Yea, I’m doing better, but there’s so much more to the story” with the fast-moving nature of the ensemble. It also didn’t help that I outwardly presented as someone who had no longstanding ailments of physical impairments, but just a pair of scars below my chin and lower lip.

Yet, even with the situation I was in, I really enjoyed my time. This past semester honestly blinked by, and it turned into less of a “one-day-at-a-time” and more of a “Hey, look, it’s the 28th again!” as time passed. While nothing about marching band was the same as it was compared to the past two seasons, I still felt like a valued member of the ensemble even if I held a Canon R10 instead of a saxophone. I also learned a ton, which was selfishly one of the main reasons I kept showing up to daily practices. We were fortunate to have a plethora of endlessly talented media professionals - all of which were students - at our disposal, and I soaked up everything they had to offer in terms of improving my own work.

It’s a tossup as to how I’ll be returning to marching band come August of this year. My goal is to obviously be back on the field, but I haven’t touched a saxophone (barring like, two times over the summer and once when I was bored last October) and sat down with it for a long time. Inherently, I feel as if it’ll be like riding a bike, where the hand positioning and right notes will come back to me as time progresses. I’d be shocked if I forgot how to perform the basics on an instrument that I’ve loved playing since the sixth grade.

Hi, band!

So what now?

Well, I think it’s hard to say. I’ve hit a year since I had my big break (get it?) and I’ve been blessed to see growth in so many phases of my life. Yet, there are some parts to the puzzle that still remind me this will always be a part of my story, most of which come on the mental side of things. It’s remembering to have strength when eating Cape Cod kettle chips or crunchy fried chicken. It’s focusing on all of the good I’ve experienced instead of daydreaming about my hospital stays this past year. And it’s especially realizing that this is just a small sentence or two in a chapter of the grand book that is my life to come. I quietly thank my therapist for that line often.

Physically, I’d say I’m 95% back to normal function. The remaining 5% is often a grey area, but like the loneliness I felt in the band season, it comes in waves. When I drink something that’s either ice cold or scalding hot and it coats the crowned molars, the inner parts of the tooth will get angry with me. If you ever see me twitch my head to the side and wince in pain when having a drink, it’s my reaction to the pain. The same thing happens with food of varying temperatures. I have to eat ice cream more mechanically than I once did, making sure it stays in the middle of my mouth and does not hug the sides.

One handsome-looking guy, if I do say so myself. And barely any scarring!

I’m also proud to say I’ve gained all the weight back that was once lost and got right in the gym. Adding some more muscle to my now-180 pound frame was a fun challenge that I continue to do today via lifting and running. I wouldn’t call it as much a “dirty bulk” where I ate fast food and mac and cheese until I magically found 50 pounds back on my body, but the fact that I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted helped tremendously. I still keep that same mentality now, but it’s more choosing a protein bar over cookies and Gatorade over a Burger 37 milkshake. Trust and believe I still indulge, however…the banana milkshake at Burger 37 will forever have a fan in me.

There are also some days where my body just likes to remind me that this injury happened. I’ll wake up and my jaw will unconsciously be clamped down, which often leads to a less-than-happy morning to come of opening my mouth a bunch of times to loosen it. On colder days, for some unexplainable reason, I’ll be able to really tell because the connecting muscles around my jaw become sore. I guess it’s really not that “unexplainable” as muscles contract in the cold, but the level to which it happens to me is definitely irregular.

I’ve learned a lot over the past year. It would be a crying shame if I didn’t, honestly. I learned so much about how I handle conflict, how I think and how I feel a wide range of hyperspecific emotions. But in a less personal sense, I learned how blessed I am to have a support system of friends, family, professors, advisors and confidants that never flinched when I needed to chat, a shoulder to cry on or someone to laugh with.

So no. Don’t go out and seek chances to break your jaw. But maybe, if this teaches anyone anything, stop and reflect. It doesn’t take a shattered face to realize that you’re stronger than you think.

Ben

SORFinal.mp4

I had talked in more surface-level detail about my experiences in my "short film," Summer of Recovery, which I shared late last July. Plenty has changed since then, but it's another reminder that I've come a long way. :)

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