Material reality is a right pain the the arse, isn't it? I might feel very much the same inside as when I had the kids 26 (and 24 and 20) years ago, but my actual physical body tells a different story.
I have always had fairly useless joints. I was forever twisting an ankle and falling off boots with only a very modest heel even in my teens. I could still put my foot behind my head in my mid 30s but I couldn't walk in anything higher than about 2 inches without risking breaking my neck (yay, hypermobility). I'm a klutz, but I'm ok about it.
My hips and knees went all to hell during my pregnancies, each worse than the last. That resulted in being on crutches and a lot of pain for most of Bonnie's pregnancy, and things never quite went back to place. I also have osteoarthritis and have struggled with (often acute) knee pain since my 30s.
A lot of that was my own damned fault - I hated exercise, I love food and drink, and the only healthy lifestyle choice I've ever made is never smoking. I treated my body more as an amusement arcade than a temple, and I took pretty lousy care of myself for a variety of uninteresting reasons. I also worked standing up for 10 or more hours a day for the 8 years I had the baking business in my 30s and 40s, and the knees got worse and worse.
Over the past 10 years I've been trying to tackle this in a number of ways. I found pool-based exercise classes for people with similar problems and I approached them with zeal. I was going to three a week at one point and my basic mobility was really improving. I can stand up without leaning on the arms of chairs and my balance is far better. I lost a significant amount of weight which has helped with joint inflammation - my knees aren't burning hot by mid afternoon anymore.
This is very good.
But. There's always a But.
More and more often I was missing Aqua classes because of pain and injury. Falling awkwardly when a rug slipped on a polished floor put me completely out of action for a couple of months and noticeably affected me for over a year. A too-vigorous class leaves me sofa-bound for two days. My knees give way numerous times a day. I try not make a fuss but the pain is sharp and debilitating. Days here are punctuated by yips and short shrieks like I have a particularly piecing form of Tourettes.
Anyway, here I am at 56 years old. I have done what I can to fix the pain from my knees - and, increasingly, hips - but each year I'm getting worse and worse. I can no longer get to the end of the road without a crutch and am desperate for a sit down at least 4 times if I try walk to the coffee shop 200m away.
My life has become small. I can't stand it.
Being a total hypocrite who pushed her Dad into getting a mobility scooter and an elevator in his house so he can go upstairs, I have flatly refused to get a walking stick. I have a crutch, because a crutch is something people use when they are recovering from an injury. Like a broken ankle or or ACL tear, say. A crutch feels like it might well be temporary. A walking stick? That's permanent. We don't need that.
Having walked across the very compact city centre of Leeds twice in the last few months and been couch bound for several days after, I really can't pretend this is going to go away. I can't pop to the shops, or post a letter, or pick up a prescription, or just live my life like a normal person.
This is stupid. I love being out and about, I love being around people. I can't self-identify as a physically mobile person, I can't wish myself better and I can't alter the material reality that my joints are shot. And it's only going to get worse as I age. Exercise is great for maintaining the best mobility I can have, but it can't fix the degradation of the joints that's already there, nor make me younger and less broken.
What I can do, and what CBT has always been wonderful at helping me do, is reassess.
This is where I am now. I can't change the past, I can't change the state I am in. I can, however, accept this less than ideal reality and decide to problem-solve my way out of it. This will not be pleasant, but it will be effective.
Okay. So I can't walk much at all. In old school terms, crippled. (We laugh when Dad calls his Blue Badge his Cripple Sticker... it's funny because it's true.) I can ride my beloved Vespa but I struggle to put it on its stand when I get where I'm going. I am a permanently disabled person who won't be striding up the big hill at Fairburn Ings to watch the starling murmurations nor walk along the Giant's Causeway.
NB - Those example do rather break my heart as I love murmurations and it's been my longtime ambition to see the basalt columns of the Causeway. And Petra. A woman can dream.
But I can do something about some of that. I can accept where I'm at. And that really, really hurts.
It's hard to give up the belief I can get better, that there's a life without joint pain and lousy mobility. One day (actually, in about 5 years or so I expect) I may qualify for NHS knee surgery and that might change things, but right here and now, it doesn't. And it's hard to accept limitations are real, and not wish them away.
So what would allow me to do what I want to do? There's an easy answer to that - a scooter or electric wheelchair. It's not the same as being about to self-propel, but it's a damned sight better than self-excluding from everything.
I don't claim disability benefits or anything like that, so I don't have hoops to jump through to access mobility schemes. This is actually an advantage. I can work out what best suits my ambitions for my life and buy it. No having to prove to strangers just how broken I am, like when I got the Blue Badge. Gods, that's a depressing procedure. I'm glad I won't have to do that.
I also have been in vociferous denial that this is a permanent state of affairs. Every year I start mapping out our trip to the Giant's Causeway and every year I have to push it back because I've had a setback and I can't walk enough yet.
YET.
For heaven's sake, Jay! It won't get better, so have a cry then book a wheelchair-accessible trip and go see the wonders of geology from relatively close by. It's not clambering on the rocks, but it's still pretty damned cool. As the Rolling Stones told us, we can't always get what we want. Close will do.
I have a choice. I can remain in denial that this is my life and I can miss out of loads of experiences and a better quality of life. Or I can jettison a stubborn mindset that a) being disabled is a 'lesser' thing (it isn't, it's just more difficult) and b) that ignoring it will make it all go away at some point.
I was pretty ruthless when pushing Dad to install that elevator between the dining room and his bedroom. I even used the - frankly unethical, although true - argument that Mum would have insisted on his getting one, so if he wanted to respect what she would have wanted, he'd better stop messing around being stranded downstairs all damned day and get the lift installed.
I was right, obviously, and it vastly improved his life and his ability live in his own home. Now I need to apply the same standard to myself.
I have been to try a few mobility scooters and chairs. And today I've referred myself to a mobility organisation for an assessment to discuss which chair or scooter would be most appropriate for what I want to be able to do.
It's a small start, but I hope it's a productive one.
No comments:
Post a Comment