Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Finally, reconnecting!

I have just returned home from a week out of town; a few days at a magic conference at which I was the lead presenter (no pressure, right?) and then a couple of days at what could only be considered a paradigm paradise in the mountains.

The usual re-re-re-re-re-discoveries of "helpful for the handicapped" Stuff which, when tried by an actually handicapped person (that'd be me), are actually not at all helpful. It took a while to explain to the maintenance guy at one hotel that bathroom doors need to be MUCH easier to open from ***BOTH*** sides; make it too hard, and Guy In The Wheelchair finds himself unable to get into the bathroom (not good at all) or finds himself trapped inside the bathroom (differently not good at all).

The paradisical mountain cabin was just fantastic except the handicap-helping things were significantly UNhelpful. There was a wheelchair ramp into the restaurant, but not into any of the rooms, and the "handicap friendly" room we stayed in had this bed that was so far above the wheelchair that "transferring" wasn't even vaguely possible, and if I didn't have as long legs as I do and can sorta-kinda walk as well as I do, there would have been no getting into the bed at all. Fortunately I was saved from difficulties and disaster, but it was weird and took way too long to figure out...and the height of the bed over the seat of the wheelchair would have caused the PT folks I struggled with during my recent hospitalization to completely lose control of all their bodily functions as they tried to call what I had to do to get into bed as a "transfer."

Hm, what else to share? Still doing just fine as a member of the "cath club," having to kinda-sorta empty my bladder with a straw (catheter), I'm back to the urologist next Tuesday where I'll get my swath of questions answered and who knows what else will happen there.

Most interesting thing about hanging with the folks at my magician's convention was that they do what they do because they're deeply passionate about just doing it, if not doing it life-changingly amazingly. God, I love them. But do I have that passion? I thought I might very well rediscover it when I returned home, but right now, this very second... all I want is to go to bed. Which I'll be doing as soon as I'm done here.

Not being able to walk is one thing. Needing to catheterize myself is another thing. Not having any passion, the kind of passion that sets in motion the changing of the world, if not the universe... that's another thing. And that's the hardest of all.

What's to be done about that passionlessness? Something I haven't tried yet, obviously, because if something I'd tried had already worked, I'd be bathing in my own passion and Getting Things DONE! But I don't... and really, really, don't know where to go.

Except at the moment, where my destination is... bed.

And so I go. With any luck, now that I'm back at home with my homey internet access, we'll stay in better touch. And the passion? We'll see, we'll see.

I hope.


1 comment:

Muffie said...

Even though there were glitches, I'm glad you did well with the trip! Get your rest, and let us know if you discover how to reignite the passion!