A torn ligament takes months, not days. Plan your patience the way you’d plan a budget.

Healing has a timeline whether you accept it or not, and most of the pain of a long injury is the gap between it and the one in your head. Patience runs out the way money does, faster when you never budgeted for it. Knowing in advance that the middle months will be dull and slow keeps them from feeling like a personal failure.

Get a real number from whoever is treating you, in weeks, and write it somewhere you will see. Break it into stages with a small marker at each one. When a week feels wasted, check it against the plan rather than against how you feel today.