Yay, another blog post this week! I really enjoyed my last post, and I hope that others did. I love Miss Illi and chatting about her. However, I need to take a little more of a serious turn in this.
I saw a post on Facebook that really got my mind thinking. Since I started dating a guy in a wheelchair, I have gotten plenty of questions and comments from various persons in my life. Most of the questions and comments have been reasonable, others are the frustrating and eventually painful questions that every SO of a person who has been paralyzed faces. While I have only been with LQ for 5 months, there are always reactions and questions.
Honestly, after I tell people about LQ and that he is a C5 quadriplegic, the first reaction is usually "OMG" or "What exactly does that mean". Truthfully, I like having people ask certain questions and showing interest in my relationship and me. The one big question is "What Happened?" I don't mind that question. People are just naturally curious. So, I explain to them the swimming accident and the injury to the best of my knowledge. Explaining to them though that the injury is complete is sometimes hard for them to swallow. When an injury is as severe (or I just refer to it as high) as LQ's is, it's hard for people to accept sometimes. When I tell people that his hands are completely paralyzed and his triceps are completely paralyzed as well. I usually need to explain things in pretty basic terms. They understand that his hands are paralyzed. However, I usually need to explain that he cannot straighten his arms through his own will. It's all gravity that takes care of that. He cannot lift his arms above his head, his triceps would control that. So, it's usually when people hear these things that you begin to hear the "Oh my, I'm so sorry".
But what really brought this on was reading a story on a Facebook group. It is a support group for Wives and Girlfriends of Men with SCI. Even though I am a Dev, going to this group really helps because there are many questions and situations that these women have been in that I have not been in yet and that they know a lot more about. I was reading though about a woman whose husband recovered from his SCI after 10 years and is now walking and no longer needs his wheelchair and hospital bed. This has made me really think. When I started to tell my friends and co workers about LQ and I, I told them he was a quadriplegic. And of course, people always ask the question, "Will he ever recover?"
Well, recover is a loaded word. Recover in the physical sense? Well, what physical sense? Will his spinal cord heal on its own? No, it won't. He has been a complete quadriplegic for 11 years, there isn't going to be a magical cure all the sudden. But has he recovered physically to the point that he is able to not only function but thrive in society? Yes, he totally has. Sometimes I feel like he is able to function better in society than I can. He sometimes has more of a will to function in society than I do. Of course he has pretty much recovered in the mental and emotional sense. Of course, there are always going to be days that people struggle. We all have them. But after becoming a high level quad at 14, I would say that LQ has recovered pretty well now that he is going to be graduating from Law School in a few months.
It is really important for people to realize that not every person with a spinal cord injury can make these miraculous recoveries that the media likes to discuss. The media always likes to add in "feel good stories" or "disabled porn". These are the things that people want to hear and read. People don't want to hear that the injuries won't change, that people won't make a recovery. And it is frustrating to hear people ask that all the time. Especially when the person is well adjusted. Understand that the adjustment isn't always an easy one. It takes a lot of pain, a lot of frustration, and a lot of fighting to get back to the new normal. It's important to keep pushing forward, not trying to change the unchangeable.
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