What Can Be Said 010

One of the most significant differences between going into a hospital to heal and entering a hospital to recover is the Rehabilitation. The different between the two is when you are healing what you get is nurses catering to what ever needs you have. When you are there to recover and rehabilitate what you get is a daily regiment of instructions, which sums up to pain and discomfort in order to change you from your current condition to a better state of being.

This, however, is not completely unfamiliar to people who follow the teachings of Christ. In the same way, God who loves us enough to want the very best for us does not leave us in the state we were in at that moment of reconciliation, nor the state we are currently in. God tells us in the (Gospel of Mark 4:32) we are to grow up in faith, (Ephesians 4:13) we are to become more Christ like, (Romans 12:2) we are to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,
(2 Corinthians 3:18) we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. This is just a sample of scriptures that tell Christians there will be a daily regiment of instructions, and with that there is sure to be pain and discomfort. How can one change from one state of being to another without the accompaniment of tenderness. Even to ask of such a thing would be to deny what Christ sacrificed for us. See John chapter 19 for more understanding.

I really had no idea what I was in for, in fact I had never heard of “rehab” before this all started. The time I had spent in the last hospital did not include exercising or stretching. So after showering and having breakfast a Therapist would come in the room and help me to stretch, as much as was possible with all the cast and braces on me.

I do not remember how long that went on before the Halo brace was removed, really all I remember is the actual day it was unbolted from my head. I realize I am using phrases that make removing the brace sound very graphic, but that is the only way I can get across to the reader the pain that accompanied this could only be weighed against the pain of the bolts being tightened the first time.

I think that it might be possible my dates might be off some, it is difficult for me to remember proper sequence of some memories and some dates. Thinking back, I remember Christmas that year being either just before or just after my arriving back in Maine. The reason I wonder about this is that there is a memory of Mom and my brothers and sister waiting until I got out of the hospital so I could have Christmas with them. I tell you the truth, whether Church family or biological family, life with out family would make recovery far more difficult.

Before I could leave the Hospital there were several things, I had to be able to do. The first was of course was being able to take care of myself, meaning bathing, dressing and being able to transfer into a vehicle.

Part of the daily regiment was to be able to do one hundred pushups, every day, five days a week, one hundred push-ups were required along with a half hour of stretching and standing in a machine that holds you up-right. This was to increase blood circulation through out my body. Interesting how that works, God did not design this body to be permanently in the sitting position.

I was soon to leave the hospital after what seemed years rather than months, though I still had to prove myself to the head of the Physical Therapy Department. She had me come to the department room and sit on the edge of mat, which was about two feet off the ground sitting on a platform that looked much like a full size bed. Once I got there she walked over to me and shoved me backward. Then again she shoved me to the right and again to the left, trying to push me off balance and to fall back onto the mat. The idea was to make sure I could catch myself before falling. To make sure all those things they had taught me were going to stay with me. And in fact they have always stayed with me.

Those things which were taught to me were taught with a reason and a purpose. I remember the Doctor telling me on a particularly rough day I was having. He said, “You have two choices, you live with your disability or you die with it. And if you live with it, you live with it alone.” He was telling me not to rely on anyone for help. To be totally independent meant not needing anyone, to be solely reliant on no one.

That statement did get me out of the Hospital and it did help me to deal with the idea of being restricted to a wheelchair for (what they said) would be the rest of my life. However that same thought process had later proved to be (and still to some degree) one of the hardest things to let go of. (John 3:30) “He must increase, but I must decrease”.

The day I left I was brought to a small house about a mile or so from the Hospital. It still was not clear in my mind that this is where I would be living and that I would not be going back to the farm. Somewhere in my mind I must have figured if I went back and lived on the farm again all this would just disappear. But truly there was no way I could do all those things necessary to live the way we did such a short time ago.

It is simply amazing how fast life can change, but that is another day’s story to tell. Continued…