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Still Wheeling
Written by Elisabeth on Thursday, July 22, 2010
My BIID has been at around 2 out of 10 badness for the last two or three months. So why do I still wheel? Wouldn’t it be easier both for me and my marriage to stop wheeling when my BIID is quiet?
I have the door to walking open. I never pretended to be a full time wheeler. I never pretended that I could not walk. I could start walking and tell people that right now I am better, that right now I don’t need to use a wheelchair though I don’t know how long it will last. These neurological disorders ar rather unpredictable, right?
So what’s the logic behind me still wheeling? I am not sure. I am not thinking much about it. But I know I am not healed. Was I healed, sitting in a chair would feel weird, wouldn’t it? The chair would scream at me that I have the wrong "accessory". But it is not. It feels good being a wheelchair user. Deep down, it is my reality, my life. I can be without my chair when the occasion arises and I feel OK. I don’t have a deep longing for my chair (except when I am standing in a long line and my back hurts), I am fairly myself, I am comfortable with others. I am even comfortable with myself for a few days but after that I start being impatient with others. Am I going through withdrawal? No but I feel like I am not going to be able to hold onto reality for much longer. I am afraid of slipping back into oblivion of daydreaming. Should I try to go without wheeling for a week or two and see what would happen? No, thank you. I am scared of what would happen. I’ve been there before. I don’t want my dreamy living-in-the-head me back. I like being fairly grounded.
I wheel I guess because I take my BIID seriously. I accept that it can overwhelm me. I accept that wheeling has a cumulative effect. I accept that just because one gets better it doesn’t mean that one should stop taking his medicine unless it’s medically advised. Should I wake up one day, look at my chair and wonder why in the world I would want to wheel, then I would stop wheeling. I would consider myself BIID-free. Until then, I will take each day as it comes and keep wheeling most of the time. It’s been eight months. I am still not tired of being me.
[Note from Sean:]Because this last paragraph is so powerful to me, I’m duplicating it. Pay attention folks, this is GOLD!
I wheel I guess because I take my BIID seriously. I accept that it can overwhelm me. I accept that wheeling has a cumulative effect. I accept that just because one gets better it doesn’t mean that one should stop taking his medicine unless it’s medically advised. Should I wake up one day, look at my chair and wonder why in the world I would want to wheel, then I would stop wheeling. I would consider myself BIID-free. Until then, I will take each day as it comes and keep wheeling most of the time. It’s been eight months. I am still not tired of being me.
Tags: BIID, Medecine, Wheelchair
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4 Comments
As usual, Elisabeth, a lot of what you say is an accurate and eloquent expression of my own feelings.
For the most part, my BIID has been hovering around a 5 on the badness scale for a while. I consider this excellent. There are still plenty of daydreaming fantasies though. Yesterday I was imagining the details of a car crash wherein I became paraplegic; hoping that I didn’t have too much collateral damage; the extrication from the car; the ambulance ride to the hospital, the surgery to fuse the crushed vertebrae; wondering how long it would be before I felt up to writing a post about it for transabled.org…
The idea of going without wheeling for a week scares the crap out of me. I have experimented with going without a leg brace for a few days though. I did it this last Sat/Sun/Mon, just staying home all the time. It seemed okay. But when I got dressed on Tuesday morning, putting on the leg brace brought a huge wave of relief and comfort.
I’m not sure how I could get away with not wheeling at work at this point. There would definitely be a barrage of questions, even though I’ve not pretended that I can’t walk.
It’s interesting about the cumulative effect of wheeling. I don’t remember reading anything about this ahead of time, but perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention. I guess I had expected there to be a sudden shift, and that would be it. There was indeed a sudden shift, but then it kept getting better and better.
If wheeling is effective, then for sure one should keep wheeling. Prozac is effective for my depression. That doesn’t mean I should quit Prozac.
Have you considered the possibility that wheeling is what’s keeping your BIID under control. That’s certainly been my experience.
I agree that without wheeling my BIID wouldn’t be so quiet. The interesting thing is that these last months were hell on a mental level. Yet, the mental anxiety/depression/marital problems haven’t had any negative influence on my BIID. I sure am not going to risk to add raging BIID to the lot.
In spite of my quiet BIID, my body image is clearer than ever.
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1 On 22 July, 2010, Phil said:
“I like being fairly grounded.”
By wheeling, not touching the ground with your feet or anything else.
One of the paradoxes of life…