Almost Able-Bodied

Detail from Nick Sweetnam's completed mural at Sherbourne and Gerrard. 
The last time you saw this it wasn't quite done.

 I've been back at work four weeks now. This means I have a whole bunch of other things to pay attention to besides my progress coming back from surgery. 

Fortunately, others are doing that for me. 

One person noticed right away on Monday this week that I'd stopped using the cane indoors. Another, seeing me walk without the cane, noted that the wobble in my gait is almost gone. Bruce tells me that my walking stride outside is like it was when we went to San Francisco, before this whole arthritis thing got started.

But wait a minute - what's that white thing?

Long ago, when I was in high school in Trenton, Ontario, I attended an assembly where a man in a wheelchair raised our awareness about disabled people. That was when I learned the word "quadriplegic." I also learned that people like the man in the wheelchair called the rest of us "Tabs," the acronym for "temporarily able-bodied." The man in the wheelchair lost the use of his arms and legs in a car crash, but, he told us, "sooner or later everyone becomes disabled, through accident or age or disease."

Wisdom.

His point was we should not only admire him for how he had lived a full and happy life despite being disabled, but be prepared ourselves to stay happy and live our lives fully when disability comes for us.

Obviously, that lesson stayed with me. I hope I've applied it. But, as I continue down the path to the land of the able-bodied, I bring two things with me from the almost two years I spent disabled: 

• a great compassion for those people who deal every day with pain and impaired movement and 
• an even greater gratitude that I'll soon not be one of those people, at least until the next affliction hits.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen