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University Library
Written by Sean on Friday, March 30, 2007
I wasn’t very old when I started haunting the public library and the local university’s medical library. I was looking for information about orthopaedics, wheelchairs, and other apparatus. It wasn’t long before I was also looking and learning about spinal cord injuries.
Not old at all indeed. I must have been 10 or 11 the first time I poked my nose at the library. I am amazed that no one called me in and asked what I was doing there.
And so I read textbooks on nursing, and on orthopaedic surgery, and gleaned information and understanding about this condition I wanted to have.
I will readily admit that at the time, I didn’t have an understanding of what paralysis was, and there was a big part of the fascination related to the apparatus (wheelchair, braces, etc). I also didn’t have an understanding of my own feelings related to paralysis. I just knew it was something fascinating, and that I really should be paralysed.
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4 Comments
2 On 30 March, 2007, Claire said:
I wasn’t quite that sophisticated at that age, but I devoured every story about disabled people that I could get my hands on. I could never get enough though!
We had a set of “installment” medical encyclopedias. The “B” volume automatically opened to the picture of the little boy in braces. Wonder how that happened?
I did that at that age too! I would go to my school library, (which was fairly large) and read up on wheelchairs, spinal cord injuries, care for paralysis…every time I could get down there, I’d go to a table in the very back and just indulge myself in the book. Of course, I always loved the fiction stories too. But yes, I did the same thing. :)
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1 On 30 March, 2007, jim said:
I was 15, and the small college where my Dad was head football coach (and that I later attended) opened a beautiful new library. The cheapskate head librarian had this brilliant idea to hire young kids, for like $2 an hour to lug books back and forth all day from the old library to the new. My Dad got me and about 10 of my pals in on it. We carried books back and forth for about 3 days and each got about 30 bucks or so, and it was hard work, even for for young football players.
Well, in one stack of books I carried (the school had a large and excellent school of nursing and it was from that section) there was a book titled something like physical care for quadriplegics and was nothing but pictures from some rehab hospital in Vancouver Canada. Actual paras and quads, getting in and out of bed, bathtubs, being lifted, transfers, you name it, it was in there. I wanted that book! I wondered how I could take it and not get caught.
It stayed on my mind for years, and when I enrolled as a student 3 years later, I checked it out. At its due date I went in and said I misplaced it. They made me pay for it. But not brand new price, because it was old and hadn’t been checked out for 2 years, so for I think $10 it was mine. I kept it untill I got married and was moving out of my bachelor pad in Tempe, Arizona. I sure wish I had it back.