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Recovery

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Little Light wrote a post recently about taking that one step:

See, there I was, incapacitated, unable to sit up or wash myself or feed myself, body weakened by four days of 103-degree fevers and convulsive chills and dehydration, in so much pain that I couldn’t drink clear water. Everything hurt–joints, tongue, you name it–even down to my eyeballs, which were in so much pain I had to blindfold myself. I had to be taken care of. At the doctor’s, I needed a wheelchair, and nobody talked to me like a person.
And I was angry.
I was hurting, I was feeling sorry for myself, I was miserable with the ravages of whatever illness this was, but you know what? I was angry.

Isn’t that interesting? Angry. I felt a sense of profoundly wounded pride, I was upset at the total stripping-away of my dignity, I didn’t feel like a person. I was sitting there naked and reeking and unable to drink water by myself, and it made me mad.

…And I suppose I just wanted to draw attention to it. I don’t have much to add to everything she’s said, other than, “Go read the whole thing.”

5 thoughts on Recovery

  1. Little Light is an amazing writer, and one of the very few who can take an experience like that horrible illness and turn it into a philosophical revelation.

  2. That’s so profound.

    I had to come to the realization this month that I cannot both pick up the house enough to clean AND clean the house. For someone raised and socialized profoundly that the decoration and cleanliness and overall presentation of my home is a major part of my worthiness as a person, this was huge. Being able to sit here, even if I couldn’t stand because my ear was being wonky again, and say, “And if you could carry that laundry basket downstairs while you’re at it, I’d appreciate it. Thanks”….well, that was a big huge thing. Still is. Still working through it. If it’s not the fibromyalgia, it’s the vestibular-thing-that-might-be-Menieres-disease.

  3. I was in a slightly different situation a couple of years ago when I fell off a stepladder at work and tore my ACL, which had to be surgically replaced. (Fortunately, the whole thing was covered by Worker’s Comp, so at least I didn’t have any financial worries about affording it or getting medical care.) And, yeah, I got very angry about the whole thing, especially since it was because of something I did that I (theoretically) should have prevented and not just a random disease that came out of nowhere. It sent me back into a depression that still needs some treatment that I can’t afford until after the New Year.

    Part of the anger is that your body, which has always been under your control, is not cooperating. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t walk, and all of a sudden I could only walk with crutches. It took about six months after the surgery before I could walk down stairs reasonably normally.

    Little light hasn’t gotten to phase 2 yet — the fear that it’s going to happen again, and the restrictions you put on yourself to try and make sure it doesn’t. I still haven’t back to taking my daily walks, not because my knee isn’t better (it’s probably a good 96%) but because I’m afraid I’m going to fall and the whole thing is going to start all over again: the crutches, the surgery, the vomiting from Vicodin. And the helplessness.

  4. @ redhorse: Damn, I can totally relate to your comment. I have fibromyalgia, too, and was born with cerebral palsy. There’s something about having a body that refuses to “fit” or cooperate that is simultaneously terrifying, humbling, and angry-making all at once. And as for the presentation of house/home/hearth aspect, I can relate to that as well. It’s incredibly frustrating to realize that you can’t follow the instructions and dictations of your (however cruel) internal voice, which are forever telling you to clean your home, put makeup on so that you don’t look like you don’t care about yourself, wear something “nice” because that’s what matters, et cetera. It took a diagnosis of fibro last year for me to realize that outside appearances count way less than many of us have been conditioned to think (I’m 21)–however, I still feel like I’m dealing with the same issues–especially when it comes to my own limitations–every day, all the time.

  5. annaham — I feel your pain. I have CP too, and the pressure can be immense. I think in my particular case I get lots of pressure from otherwise well-meaning people because, for someone with CP, I’m really quite able-bodied, so because I seem pretty “normal,” a lot of people don’t take “I can’t” for an answer. People frequently try to cajole me into doing things that severely push my physical limitations because they either think that since I can do yea much, I should be able to do a bit more than that, or else because they think they’re doing me a favour (by challenging me, of course!).

    Winter. Winter is unquestionably the most undignified time of the year for me. I loathe ice. I live in Southwestern Ontario, so there’s also quite a lot of it between December and April…

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