佚名/Anonymous
"You will never walk again. You will have to use a wheelchair." Unprepared for the doctor's grim prognosis, I heard his words fall heavily on my ears, numbing my soul. If I had never felt hopeless before, I felt hopeless then.
My catastrophic car accident had left me unconscious and in critical condition. I awakened to find both legs swathed in casts, the left one in traction to aid the healing of a broken hip and pelvis. While I had other serious injuries, my legs were my prime concern. Working as a special-needs teacher and "on the go" by nature, I couldn't imagine being confined, let alone an invalid.
Lying in my bed motionless and relying on prayer, I wondered how I could give my ten-year-old son hope that Mom would heal. He'd been cheerful on every visit, but I saw the fear in his eyes. Looking forward to having a totally handicapped mother and the implications of that were weighing heavily on his little shoulders. He needed the ray of hope that I would not be in a wheelchair forever.
Just maybe, I thought, I could use this experience to teach what to do when adversity strikes. But I wasn't just being altruistic. I needed something besides my physical healing to sink my Irish stubbornness into—it's that trait that kept me going through the toughest challenge of my life.
It didn't take me long to become impatient with my limited mobility and even with the pace the therapists were willing to go with me. I vowed to learn everything they showed me. Attempting to move on my own at night after the nurses' last rounds, I'm sure I broke every hospital rule. I needed to make things happen in my way. And being confined to a wheelchair the rest of my life didn't fit into my plans.
At first, I taught myself to move from the bed to the wheelchair. I made tiny movements for weeks, afraid of falling, but more afraid to just lie in bed. I reached a point where my arms were strong enough to swing me into the chair. Getting out of the chair and back into bed proved more difficult, but I soon developed a method of grabbing the sheets with one hand and the traction bar with the other. I wouldn't win any gymnastics competitions, but it worked. I often wondered what the nurses and therapists would have done if they'd seen me struggling on my own.