After being released from the hospital, MJ is doing her best at home, but a new term in the lexicon of words we use has emerged: "temporary disability." It's a difficult condition to accept, and the only saving grace is that hopefully the condition is temporary, but it emphasizes the fact that MJ is not able to do many things, causing her to often feel trapped and helpless. The Japanese call the condition something akin to "not free," which is interesting because it captures one of the effects of the condition: MJ cannot drive a car, cannot put weight on her right foot, cannot put on her own shoes, it's a very limiting condition and makes me realize I take all the daily functions I'm able to do for granted. It doesn't seem like a fair punishment for merely losing one's balance on a scooter; one of life's many mysteries and imperfections of why certain insignificant moments have such drastic and irreversible consequences. A person can work towards something all their life but lose it all in one split second, and vice versa they can have something happen for a split second that takes years and much of one's life to recover from. Whereas most good things don't come from just one instant moment, it requires years of training and hard work bit by bit to get something really good like marriage, graduation, or financial independence. (The stock market often works this way, it'll take a long time to go up bit by bit, but a huge crash can wipe out all those gains rather quickly). It's frustrating for me as the caretaker/ husband of the temporarily disabled person to see them struggling and getting frustrated all the time and know there's nothing I can do about it, and the mutual frustration that we both share related to the temporary disability is the indirect catalyst for arguments that we get into, even though it's neither of our fault that the accident happened. I can only be grateful that I've never really had something like this happen before, whereas some people experience traumatic events and limiting developments often like having a family member live at the hospital or lose something in an accident.......those cause even more ripple effects and tangential frustration for the family members. It's like the nurses often say at a hospital: "you think you have it bad as a patient until you see what someone else is going through."
There are many minor things that people who have disabilities suffer through that most able-bodied people don't think about. Just today, MJ and I went to a scheduled appointment at the Duke student health center but couldn't find a parking spot; there were also no handicapped parking spots so I had to drop MJ off neither the front entrance, but it still wasn't close enough so MJ had to struggle up a ramp to get to the front door of the building on crutches. It's ironic: in order to get treated for the disability, one has to do something that is limited by the disability. So now I understand why disabled people get preferential treatment, and really resent the people who abuse the disability placard to park in the spots when they don't need to. MJ and I just got one for us, and we will not use it after MJ gets better.
I now appreciate people who say they recovered from injuries and surgeries and the level of intensity of their recovery: it's hard work to recover. MJ goes through physical therapy seemingly every other day. It's not just "get the surgery, wait 3 months, sit on a couch or lay down in bed, and everything will magically be better." Sure, one's body is healing itself slowly during that time period, but the patient also has to make sure the injured area is back to operational mode, like working out on it and bending the knee often, or wiggling toes to make sure those are still working. All the while making sure not to reinjure the area and cause more damage. Oh yea and going through constant pain. MJ was telling me casually the other day how her pain is progressing from "stabbing" pain to "throbbing" pain and that it's actually a good sign, whereas I just thought about how painful just that idea was. My pain tolerance is not that high, which is apparently common for my gender according to the nurses we talk to: most of the macho men are actually the ones who react to the pain more dramatically and either cry or have some sort of breakdown, whereas the ladies are more tolerant (maybe because some women had already undergone childbirth?) I will admit I am a huge baby about getting shots, drawing blood, even going to the dentist, etc. I just don't like the idea of other people inflicting pain n me so instinctively I draw back and/or wince when a nurse sticks a needle or something, even if it doesn't actually hurt that much, the anticipation of it hurting actually has some effects.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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