Showing posts with label OI risks. Show all posts

When my older brother injured his tibia in high school from a pole vaulting accident, I pretty much just rolled my eyes. From this instance it's arguable that I am just a soul-less person. Or maybe I'm just a cruel younger sister who has no sympathy. My thinking was "You got to fly through the air and leap over a bar, why are you crying?!" 
Okay fine. I understood that the muscle spasms killed at night. And every time he mistakenly moved it during his sleep, because his body 'forgot', it probably also killed too. I will say though, watching Timmy sit in the cast room at Children's Hospital from the other side of the curtain was bizarre. My body kept telling me this is a trick of the mind, that's really you sitting there!

Having the attitude of "been there & done that" when it comes to fractures, I have long ago forfeited a 'normal' pain threshold. It also seems that I threw out the window a 'normal' risk management scale. But this second scale isn't necessarily something that naturally comes with having O.I. It's cultivated I think in part by the person's personality, physical health, past experiences, pure luck, and attitude.

Take for instance this example from my own personal fears -- I am terrified of going down steep ramps and curb cuts. Anything more than a 50 degree incline and I will swivel around and go down it backwards. Why? Because I have tipped over too many times, catapulted face forward, broken too many legs, and wound up in too many long leg casts for summers on end... so every time my stomach starts to lurch forward on an incline, I become paralyzed with an (ir)rational fear and would rather not have to look. It's silly, many would say ridiculous, and trust me my friends tease me about it all the time!
Yet when it comes to roller coasters that turn, spin, dive, hang upside down, and zoom backwards I am all for it. Why? Because I haven't gotten hurt on a roller coaster ...yet! My ability to consider what seems fun and non-harmful is based on some totally illogical scale of measurement.

But it's also because that's how life is for me. For so many of us, right? When we know that the chances of fracturing can happen with a sneeze, a weird way of turning over, or a fall into a water bed -- those everyday potentials for injury look like nothing when we put it on the scale of a roller coaster. (Even roller coasters that I'm not tall enough to ride on... but sneak on anyway...NOT recommended.) That's exactly why I don't measure each life experience on the same scale. No matter how accurately that risk management scale may measure.. it wouldn't be an accurate way of living my life. Because putting them on a scale doesn't factor in: fun, that gut wrenching thrill, the risk-taker in me, and best of all the memories I will take away afterwards.

It was a few years ago that my older brother had brought up the fact that he was making a list of things he wants to do before he dies. I didn't really take him seriously at the time, and I still don't feel the need to make such a list. Every day is something that I want to have on "that bucket list" because I know it's something I'm lucky to get to experience. Jokingly I said,
"I want to dive down a waterfall."
"Sandy you'd break every bone in your body."
"No I wouldn't, it's water. I can swim. Water doesn't hurt me."
"No you'd break every bone in your body going down." 
"....Well... what if I were lowered down the waterfall, like in a bucket down a well?"

Forget living life on the edge, live on possibility without the hindrances of scales and lists!

I don't consider myself to be any different from my friends. I think like them, I feel as they do, I am able to have the same life style as they have etc. Except for one way I know that I am drastically different from them -- alcoholic intake.
I am not as tall as they are, do not weigh as much, do not have the same sized liver, and oh yeah.. I'm fragile. This makes my alcoholic intake and general drinking experience to be somewhat different than that of my friends. Ever since I started drinking ahem, legally at age 21, of course..I've been trying to put my finger on what alcohol does to my body. My first drink was something fruity and tasted more of cranberry juice than alcohol, it probably had some stereotypical girly name (but god no it was not pink!) But it was one of those sneaky drinks that doesn't taste like alcohol, so you keep drinking and drinking until

BAM! That would be the sound of my wheelchair into a wall.

I can't ever do shots. Believe me, I've done them before and in my mind it is like sticking a hot fire brand down my throat, whirling it around and then forcing it into my stomach. Within seconds my brain and body are in completely different universes and I am floating just inches above my wheelchair's joystick, trying desperately to steer correctly but always missing -- kind of like when you watch a 3D movie and when you reach out your fingers are just grasping at an illusion.
Wine? Wine tastes like an explosion of fart on my taste buds. I hate it. And will force myself to drink it only when I have to pretend to be "mature" and somewhat adult-like. Also, if there is cheese around - that makes wine drinking absolutely acceptable. But honestly most of the time I will opt for a flavorful beer (Blue Moon, anyone? Or perhaps an Allagash White? Or in the spirit of fall Sam Adam's Pumpkin Ale?) or some embarrassingly fruit-drenched cocktail.

All too often and quickly the alcohol will tend to go straight to my head. Which is confusing to me because at the very same time I will feel the emergency world-is-ending urge need to pee (and god help the person who is using the wheelchair-accessible stall in these instances!). It's like there is some vertical tube that runs from the top of my skull to the bottom of my bladder, and when alcohol hits my lips it forms an immediate funnel whose sole purpose it is to slosh the liquid around in that tunnel until 2AM or when my head crashes on to the pillow.

For someone who has a tendency to over think, over work, over analyze and be stressed out about everything simultaneously -- my friends often tell me that having a drink would do me a lot of good. "Sandy, live a little. Relax. Everything will be fine." And there have been more than a few occasions when I forget that I am not the same height, weight, or size of my able-bodied friends. Suddenly the world, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the faces of my friends will all seem to be buzzing - everyone will seem overly enthused and giggly, but by the time I've made the 5th trip to the restroom that vertical tube in me will have cleared out, and I'll have remembered: I'm fragile and no matter how much delusional fun I'm having, no amount of swishing chemicals can ever change my genetic make-up.