For over 10 years I have had to accept a new definition of normal. My normal is a world of helplessness where what you want to accomplish is hindered by what you can accomplish, still you try. You try and you fall and get hurt. Then its off to the ED and nothings wrong with you because your joints have popped back into place and there is just a little swelling. So you’re the ‘overreacter’ the ‘hypochondriac’,’malingerer’ and the one causing the family financial trouble with medical bills. You spend one hour trying and eight recovering. (I speak of this as a ratio 1:8=2:16=3:24=4:32) The payment is in pain. Swelling, aching, stabbing, grinding, burning. Do one thing for yourself, be punished. Do one for someone else, be punished. Go sit in the rocking chair granny, out of the way please. Your starving, but the food is downstairs, oh well. Your tired, but the bed is upstairs, oh well. Even if it were down here, it would be down the long hallway. You must depend on others to run and get you things which they get tired of and heave sighs at you. They avoid you. You don’t want their help, they don’t want to stop what they are doing to help you. Its mutual. You can’t go for a walk. You can’t fold the laundry. You can’t carry a bag of groceries. You can’t walk the length of a grocery store. You can’t park near enough to most places to make it inside without feeling the bones grinding together. You can’t make the bed. You can’t hold a coffee cup, some days you can’t hold a piece of paper. You forget what you can’t do, until the stabbing pain reminds you. You need the wall to hold you up when you stand. Your feet are unreliable and unstable and filled with painful bones that poke through. Your knees are tricksters that buckle. Your hips burn. You can take medication. It masks the pain but not the injuries that continue to pile up. It makes you smile at people instead of cry or scowl. It makes you numb. It traps you in the house since you can’t drive. It makes you someone else. Take enough to kill the pain and you might kill the patient too. This has been my life since my first major dislocation, A gradual slide into helplessness and hopelessness. Each year being a little worse than the year before. Each year a little less you can do. Walk a little less, use your hands a little less, your feet a little less, your knees, arms, back, hips, mind.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:43:52 +0000
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