Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I've been in a bad car accident. My leg was broken rather severely. My femur was split in two - I have a big metal rod inside it now that knit it back together. My knee cap was broken into five different pieces. The surgeons strung it back together with wire. I broke my fibula (that little bone at the back of your calf). A piece of my foot sheered off and lodged in the tendons of my foot.
Lesser people would have been completely crippled by such an accident. I know a woman who slipped on snow in a bank parking lot, broke her ankle, was in a cast for five weeks and never worked again. She retreated into her house, rarely goes out, has very few friends and in general became a shell of her former self.