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| Pamela Hsieh Rehab Revolution |
Sidenote: I just found out it is Stroke Awareness Month. Let's spread the word on the revolution here, as awareness is pretty much all we're about here! Thank you!!
It occurred to me that perhaps I haven't much integrated an element of comedy in this blog -- after all, why would I? Disability acquisition is a heavy topic. Healing is hard. The experience can be very dark and very isolating.
But an invaluable tool to coping with that difficult stuff is humor. It's absolutely essential to be able to laugh at the inevitably funny scenarios you'll find yourself in. It's not necessarily making light of a dire situation or disrespecting the fact, even if it may seem that way. It's a mechanism for reminding yourself (and others) that things are really not so bad, and not to feel too sorry for yourself.
It's also a sense of humor that keeps a lot of oldies alive for so long, so keep that in mind!So I'm going to start posting occasional anecdotes involving my own silly, sitcom-worthy moments. Feel free to laugh, and relate! If you've got any funny stories to share, please e-mail me or leave a comment below.
To start, I'll tell you about this morning. I recently took on a new project; after deciding it'd be a fine idea to start an herb garden and spending absurd amounts of time at Home Depot this week learning about soil, compost, and how to build a planter box, I had a big planter box custom-built yesterday out of cedar.
Apparently planter boxes you buy ready-made at the store are about twenty-four to thirty-six inches, probably because they're intended to sit under windowsills. But I had a vision floating around in my head of a much longer, wider wooden box which apparently was unique to me and my mind, because after standing around for another forty minutes Googling and calling various home improvement stores and plant nurseries, no one carried such a thing. So I returned the next day and managed to get a box probably about forty-two inches long and very artistically designed (thankyouvehmuch ;)) custom built for me for less than ten bucks. (Whoo!)
I got up at 8.30 this morning and decided to sand the box so I could begin staining it a cherry wood color.
So FYI, after wrestling the box from the garage and through the house and onto the back patio, I learned that wood stain is a very stubborn, sticky substance. After painting my first layer around the entire box (which is about 75% my size) and having the foam from the brush pop off multiple times, I began painting it with my hand clutching the foam to the handle.
When I finished, I sauntered back inside ready to rinse off the stain, covering my right, good hand, and vaguely splattered on my left wrist, my right foot, and my legs.
Soap did not help. It was like an invincible, thin layer of glue. The stain stayed put as though it were its job to permanently stain your skin, and in a panic, I attempted to phone a friend -- who didn't pick up -- with my cleaner, but affected left hand.
I totally didn't know what to do. The stain wasn't coming off and was covering every fingernail, every crevice, in the nooks between my fingers -- missing only the lower half of my palm -- to have my one good hand covered in noxious wood stain was a total "Oh crap" moment. And if I didn't get it off, I was going to have to avoid touching anything, cooking, eating, and using electronics . . . indefinitely.
Now, this was a whole other beast to purposeful, safe CIMT. At least with that harmless cream puff mitt you know that if something truly is impossible -- or if you're in a rush -- with the affected hand, you can always pull it off and do it properly with your unaffected hand. This, on the other hand, was akin to CIMT-ing by accident using, instead of a mitt, a very real risk of gluing my own "good" hand to either my own body or to any other object in your immediate vicinity. (Try explaining that to strangers. Scratch that; in this situation I'd likely to not leave the house -- probably because I'd have to lock the door using my teeth.)
On the plus side, the herb garden's going to look fantastic.
On the not-so-bright side, I have to paint my second layer in about an hour.
Perhaps I should invest in some gloves.
To our healing,
Pamela
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