Friday, June 24, 2016

A Most Unusual Tool





The crutch sits against the bed rails.  I stare it down.  It is the most obnoxious thing in the world.  I know I will be able to walk again.  It will take a bit though.  Since both legs are broken.  The air socks inflate.  Goddess Above, I *HATE* those things.  I know how necessary they are.  The last thing I want is a blood clot on top of everything else.  They just seem to be the defining piece of equipment in the legion of equipment I have attached.  The IV is OK, the heart monitor is OK, the ET finger O2 sensor is OK.  I can ignore those much of the time.  No matter what I am doing, when the air socks inflate, I stop.  Partly because they hurt.  Partly because I have no control over it.  It just drags my attention away from anything I am doing – watching TV, reading my tablet, talking a journal entry into Evernote.  It just draws the attention.  Why did they have to set them so tight?  I’ve asked at least three nurses here at rehab, and no one of them has told me.  They just repeat “Well, they are to prevent blood clots in your legs.”  Yes, I know that.  I just feel like they are much too tight.  Anyway, they are what they are.  I have better things to do.  I go back to my book.  I’m reading “Pollyanna”.  I need the glad game in the worst way.  I have not read this since I was a child.  I have a problem, as an adult, with the concept that the book is about only seeing the best and there is no bad in the world.  That is absolutely NOT what it is about.  It is about – damn those air socks – finding something positive in all the darkness, finding a reason to get up in the morning, a reason to go on.  Pollyanna would say “Melody, be glad you can FEEL the air socks, since they were not sure you were going to gain the feeling back in your legs.”  She would be right.  Interesting that I should have been reading this before the accident.  She gets hit by an automobile (a very new thing, she doesn’t realize how fast it goes relative to a horse.)  They believe she will never walk again.  Of course, that is a big block to her playing the game.  Then people come that she has helped with the game and try to help her to feel glad because she helped them.  She finally comes to find something positive.  It is very hard for her… DAMN those air socks!!


©May 17, 2015 Michelle R. Owings-Christian




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