I'm a fan of a show called '30 Days' on the FX network. It was created by the guy who did 'Super Size Me', which I saw about a year after it came out and I haven't been to a McDonald's since. This show basically has people with opposing views walk a mile (or a month) in each other's shoes. Last season they had a Christian live with a Muslim family and a border patrolman live with a family of illegal immigrants, etc. This week's episode was an ex-NFL player living in a wheelchair for a month. He wasn't allowed to use his legs at all in that time, other than to stretch once a day to avoid permanent damage. He also attended a quadriplegic support group once a week and met people who actually have to live in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. He was very surprised at how much everyone around him had to adjust to his handicap. His wife had to basically drive him everywhere for the first few days, until he got his car fitted for hand controls.
The whole experience really tested this guy in every way possible.
And as I was watching this show with some of my friends, it kinda took me back to when I was in a wheelchair. I didn't have a spinal injury, thank God. But during the first two months after I was released from the hospital, I was in and out of surgery and unsure if I'd ever walk again. I wasn't unsure, honestly. I'm too damn stubborn to believe I'll never get back on my feet. If there's a chance, no matter how small, and I was told my chance was VERY small, then I'm gonna do all I can to get there. During the two months I was in the wheelchair, everything pretty much sucked. I'm impatient, so you can imagine the agony of having to wait through a million operations and tests before I could even attempt to walk. Physical therapy was a freakin' nightmare because you have to re-learn how to do everything with your legs. I could have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of my life. And I joke all the time now that I'd have one of those Hoveround things but a really souped up one. It would be the king of the power chairs. But I'm glad it didn't come to that. I remember how people used to look at me when I was in that wheelchair though. People don't look you in the eye when you're in a wheelchair. They look everywhere but in your eyes. If a friend or my sister were behind the chair to push it, people would greet them and just kind of avoid me altogether. Going into stores or sitting in restaurants, you could feel eyes staring at you all the time. You'd think people had never seen a handicapped person before. And I don't understand why people stare at anyone. I was taught that it's impolite, no matter what the circumstance, so no matter how weird or whatever someone looks, I don't stare at them. During my recovery, all I wanted to do was go out and be normal and try to forget my situation for awhile but instead I ended up at home a lot because I was tired of being looked at like some circus freak.
One of the kids in the show was 17 when he broke his neck and he lost a lot of friends because of it. They were too young to deal with it, so they just stopped calling. Even his best friend, who was the one who pulled him out of the water when he got hurt, exiled himself from the situation for two years. Nothing helps you sort your life out like a near-death experience. You find out who your friends are, you find friends you never knew you had, and you learn to appreciate life and to let the people you love know how you feel. I was always very open about my feelings, I grew up in an extremely loving family but I've noticed since the accident, everyone around me has adapted that same attitude. You never know when something's gonna happen and when it could be your last chance to see someone and tell them you love them. A near-death experience teaches you to do what you wanna do with your life because any day could be the last one. I think being 21 when I almost bit the dust was maybe a little bit of a disadvantage. Too young to handle anything that was going on, so I didn't. And that brought on a lot of what I had to drudge through over the next few years. I don't think I understood or appreciated, at the time, all of the things my girlfriend and my family did to adjust to my injury. It wasn't just the leg, the brain got knocked around quite a bit, and everyone had to deal with how I'd changed. I couldn't sleep in my own bed because it was upstairs so everything was moved to a downstairs guest room.
Overall, watching the show brought back a lot of memories, mostly bad memories, that I hadn't thought of in a long time. And it shed some light on things that happened that I'd never thought of before, so I learned something new about myself and about the situation and that's always good. I think it re-upped me on my appreciation of what I have now and how far I've come to get here.
