Give the girl a hand

Immediately after my accident and surgery I was admitted to the hospital for a couple of weeks. I was then transferred to a rehab facility in Manhattan where I lived on a pediatric floor for another three or four months.

Strangely enough, in this small world we live in, a friend of a friend happened to already be in that same hospital on that same floor recovering from his own traumatic life changing injury (shout out Sean Brennan ❤️). I was so lucky to have him there. We didn’t know each other prior to that but the connection was instant and I think instrumental in my emotional and mental well being and recovery.

Sean was almost finished at rehab and able to walk although assisted so our physical situation wasn’t the same but we were in the same place in more ways than one. He invited me one day up to the roof where he would escape to to sneak cigarettes. Break the rules? Me? Okay, fine. So I joined him and our conversations began as did a friendship and a couple of decades of smoking butts.

In stark contrast to Sean who was full of positivity and humor was one of my three cell mates - I mean, roommates. “Jane” was sentenced to rehab after an unfortunate incident where a drunk driver hit a telephone pole with enough force to knock it down. It landed on “Jane” while she was walking home from school and she subsequently lost her arm, most of her teeth, and had several other less serious but still shitty injuries.

“Jane” would cry every day. In all honesty, most of us did, but this bitch whined and cried and whined and complained for the majority of the day for a long time after she arrived. She would cry that she couldn’t blow her nose because she only had one hand. She ‘couldn’t eat’ because she only had one hand.. you get the picture.

Now I’m not saying she should just cheer up and deal with it. I’m just saying that generally, there are two kinds of people and then those that fall somewhere in the middle. There are people like her, and then people like my other roommate who loved to steal “Jane’s” prosthetic arm and hide it just to fuck with her because she was so annoying. Don’t judge. We were kids. We had ALL been through some shit and we all had our own way of dealing with it.

You can whine and complain and focus your energy into every little thing you “can’t” do. (How many hands do you actually need to blow your nose? Mmhmmm) Or you can refocus that energy and put it into what you CAN do. What are you able to do? What are you capable of? Maybe it won’t be exactly what or how you want to do it, but it will be better than doing nothing. You can be one step closer to where you want to be.

I don’t know what ever became of “Jane” but I do know that a couple of months later she was in a much better place. I would like to think that making her search for her arm every day in what became a fun distraction for the rest of us, helped her to see the humor and maybe a little light. I mean, if it didn’t for her, it certainly did for us #sorrynotsorry - but being amongst your peers in the bizarre twisted fate that brought us together was definitely beneficial for each of us in our own way.

Everyone reacts differently to trauma. We all manage in our own unique way. The thing is, you have to deal with it. You have to face the pain. You must acknowledge it’s there and figure out how to move passed it. Sometimes you have to cry for a while. Sometimes you have to torture an amputee. Neither is ideal. Neither is good or bad (well, maybe a little bad). It is a learning experience every step of the way.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, most likely many times: what happens to us does not define us, our reaction to it does. Bad things are unfortunately a part of life. All of us will experience some kind of tragedy or loss and it will affect us each in a unique way. And just like our situations are unique to us, so is our ability to heal and grow. Don’t assume you can’t handle it because we each possess the strength within ourselves to carry on.

I have a million stories from that short stay which at that time, felt like an eternity. In retrospect, I had some fun. I met some really interesting kids - because that’s what we all were - kids, that I likely would have never met or connected with otherwise.

No matter what you’re going through, I assure you, you’re not alone. You’re not the first person going though it and you won’t be the last. Find your tribe. Find a group you can identify with. Latch on to who or whatever helps you see the light. ✌🏼💕