Saturday, September 17, 2011

"Broken" becoming "better"

Today, the hand brakes on my walker/transport chair ("translator" is, I think, the official term) broke. Specifically, the brake handles broke clean off; the wire cable that connects the brake handles to the brakes themselves simply snapped. Both of them. At the same time.

Which meant that the walker, even though it still worked to support "walking," was very odd to use. In some circumstances, actually unsafe. And therefore, unusable, at least as a walker (which is how I use it most of the time).

On the advice of my neighbor, I took it to a local bike shop that I've driven by many times but never really noticed, until today. A bike shop was a good idea, I thought, since the braking system was basically bicycle-brake technology.

It wasn't a "good" idea, it was a "helluva" idea. Not only was it one of the nicest "neighborhood shops" I've ever been in, and not only had they seen (and repaired) these things many times before, but they didn't just fix it, they made it better than it was on the day I bought it. The brakes have never been so good as they are now, and using the walker is just wonderful.

The brakes breaking actually started a chain of events that ended up causing the walker to work better than it ever had before. The best thing that ever happened to it was that very "malfunction."

I wonder if this is a metaphor for the M.S. experience itself. That my ever-so-comfy life being "broken" by the onset of M.S. is actually what will cause it to become better than it ever was before.

Actually... in some ways, that's actually happened already.

Not enough ways... yet.

At least, that's what I hope.

Kinda think it's on me at this point, to make the necessary repairs to my life, so that my life becomes better than it was before the malfunction.

An interesting thing, this M.S., isn't it?

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