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Apparently everyone knew but me. As strange as it sounds, it was easy enough to get lulled into this erroneous belief, living a life of permanent paralysis, seemingly at the bottom of the barrel. Down here you get used to the idea that life cannot possibly get any better, at least in the physical sense. But by that same token, it surely could not get any worse, either.

It could get worse, of course—many times over. But perhaps we were young enough and strong enough at the onset of our injury; or just plain stubborn enough to adapt to a level that put us back out there among the humans, living life in their world, but somehow on our own terms. So life rolled on with us in tow, and we had no choice but to hang on. College, jobs, wife and kids; get up, go to work, come home, drive this one here, that one there, tomorrow comes, start all over again—forward march, march, march. And with each passing year our disability became more and more irrelevant and our resolve grew stronger and covered us like chain mail; armadillo skin that made us, at least in our own minds, invincible.

Until one day when, inexplicably, we fall out of step.

Recently I acquired an infection in my right foot that blew up into a full blown case of cellulitis. From what we can tell, it may have entered through a patch of winter eczema that I always get on my instep during the dry months, or from a small scrape on my big toe I got rounding a corner too fast in my house; but eerily, no one knows for sure. It required a week in the hospital, hooked up to an IV dripping with various industrial strength antibiotics. When all was said and done, the blistering from the infection claimed about 50% of the skin on the top of my foot, along with a good patch on my ankle—all told, another 3 weeks of convalescing at home in bed with my foot elevated and daily dressing changes from the visiting nurses. It was the first time I had been back in the hospital as an in-patient in 25 years, since I had first become spinal cord injured at age nineteen, back in 1984. But even worse; it was the first time since becoming married that I had gone from a fully functional partner and parent, to a useless, bed-ridden paraplegic, just like 25 years ago. Invincible indeed.

Though my infection wasn’t necessarily a spinal-related malady, it still served as a stern wakeup call to my own mortality. The truth is that the spinal cord injured population is at a much higher risk for conditions like kidney disease, respiratory ailments, skin ulcers, circulatory problems and osteoporosis than our able-bodied companions. I have always fought to ignore these sobering facts, as if being overly conscious of them would suddenly cause me to wallow in them. I guess the trick is to be aware of that which sets us apart or puts us at risk, while not counting ourselves out of society altogether. The past few weeks have taught me how poor I’ve been at this.

My strategy for seamless assimilation into society with a disability has been a kind of passive denial; I’ve mastered the mobility aspect of navigating through the day to day rigors of life, however my own mental image of myself out there apparently does not include me in a wheelchair. Think of Herman Munster walking down the street: He sees himself as just a normal guy, not a freakish ghoul with bolts in his neck; meanwhile people stare and point, cars crash into one another and little children scream and flee in terror. Sadly I can relate to all of that on some level.

Being recently confined to a hospital bed for a week and my house for another 3 weeks feels eerily like 25 years ago, when my future beyond the four walls I was stuck in remained a complete mystery. I would have considered myself the last person who needed a reminder that anyone’s life can change at the drop of a hat; from getting run over by a bus, to a chance accident while riding home with a friend, to a freak, near-life threatening infection—but this experience has taught me something the past 25 years out on the mean streets has not.

Therefore…

I will see a dermatologist about those strange rashes I sometimes get. I will be more careful not to scrape my bare feet around the house at break-neck speeds. I will think twice before ripping my shoulders up trying some death-defying feat designed to shock and amaze the able-bodied establishment. I will acknowledge that seeing a doctor from time to time isn’t a sign of weakness, that taking the appropriate health precautions isn’t feeding a stereotype of sickly, wheelchair-bound hypochondriacs—it’s just plain smart.

After 25 years, it took a month off from my hectic life to prove that I don’t have to be an invincible super-human to get along in this world. All I need to be is just plain human.