As I was being wheeled to my first rehab session I became aware of something i had never thought about...I was the youngest person in rehab. When I say that I was younger than the other people, I mean younger than most of there kids! I don't know what I expected, but not this! It was weird to see and old man in a wheelchair using his legs to walk the chair around and be jealous.
Seeing these people made the reality of my situation hit home. I wasn't going to just get up and walk out one day. While my evaluation was going on, I watched people making circles with their ankles and putting pegs in holes. In a lot of ways it made me hopeless...almost like being put in a nursing home. Here I could hide from my disabilities. Actually there wasn't much of anything I could hide from.
I had lived in a bubble at Scott and White. Everyone knew my situation and information I was given was closely monitored by the doctors. Saving my leg was the big fight, walking was a distant dream. Here no one knew what happened to me so they all asked! There was always a new patient or nurse who wanted to hear the story. The doctors knew the medical details but wanted to know the rest. My Neuropsychologist wanted to delve into the details. Somewhere along the way I started felling really sorry for myself. I went through a period that I cried every waking moment I wasn't in physical therapy. I honestly thought I was losing my mind! This was the part of my recovery that I really wished I had died. It was strange. As little as a knew about the month I was out, I did know that there were times things were very serious. There was also the wreck itself...people die every day in wrecks no where near as bad as mine. Why did I have to be the one that lived? There were a couple of times that I think I could have easily killed myself if I has been mobile enough to get to something that would have done the job. Being in a wheelchair and learning to hop on one foot was not how I pictured this point in my life.
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