Welcome to my world 

I foolishly booked a full pelvic ultrasound exactly one year after a stroke that nearly killed me, then spent the day and night before with my head drowning in paranoia. I was convinced that I’d get another shit storm of medical drama. While I won’t know the results for a couple of weeks yet, the one thing that never entered my mind was that my wonderful husband would suffer a painful situation of his own. On his 3rd day back from a 3 week medical leave my sweet husband threw his back out and now begins a painful recovery process of his own. He’s barely walking, sometimes crawling and using my manual wheelchair in combination with a cane. He wheeled himself to the doctor and got a script for muscle relaxants and pain killers along with an education in what it’s like to be me. 

With a sudden loss of mobility, having to rely on outside help and constant pain, he ventured out into the world only to find the people in it are shitty when it comes to being faced with a wheelchair. The only people who were nice were his doctor, who squeezed him into a busy schedule and a homeless fellow who opened a door for him. Everyone else either looked  down their noses at him or tried really hard not to look at all.

The one thing I’ve never been able to explain very well is when something happens that takes away your mobility you are still you, but the world ceases to see you as human they look at you  with fear and disgust, or worse,  pity. In the 3 hours it took to get to the doctors and back, my husband had to endure something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,  a loss of humanity. Thankfully ,his back should be more temporary than my paralysis 

In the mean time, I’ll be bathing less without the help I need to get into the tub for a while.