Skip to main content

Old? Infirm?


A friend sent this article to me today:

 Are you Old? Infirm?


 I can relate. Though  I'm not old - despite what the three-year-olds in my Sunday school class say.

 And I am not infirm - and I'll wack over the head with my cane anyone, repeat anyone, that would call me that.

I resemble Nancy in the article. She calls herself crippled. And Mr. Bruni wrote, "I confessed that I cringed whenever she called herself “crippled,” which she does, because she values directness and has a streak of mischief in her." I prefer the term 'gimp' and have also had others cringe when I say that. I like the term they arrived at "limited" but it's not perfect - maybe just a little more politically correct.

 I have felt that diminishment when in my wheelchair. But being a tad feisty and Irish, I fight that with every ounce of my being. My personality has always been a little on the large side and not very quiet or shy, so I make it a challenge to 'be seen' - and not as the woman in the chair but instead for the woman that I am, and to make the chair disappear.

 I also believe, I am ahead of my time. As we boomers are getting older, we rely more on assistance to get around. So, dear friends, I'm just being a four-wheeling trailblazer and doing all I can to erase any potential stigma there might be to being 'limited'. You can thank me later!


Comments

Post a Comment

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

Treatment begins

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is the day I begin, at last, treatment. Today is the day I begin to kick cancer's ass. Today is the day I start infusing ugly, nasty, side-affect laden, toxic chemicals for the greater good. Today is a day that I wish I could rewrite the script for completely deleting the part requiring me to need breast cancer chemo. And yet, here it is and at 1:15 EST I will be at the Cancer & Hematology Center in Holland. It's where I will be a lot for the next five months. It's where I will, I'm sure (and surety is something I have less of these days as I know not how I will respond to chemo), create new friendships and forge bonds with people that I am currently unfamiliar. Because that's who I am; a lover of people and a woman that wants to know and love on all the people she comes to meet.  I don't know why I have breast cancer but someday I will ask God (along with a whole bunch of other questions!). I do b...
Post a Comment
Read more

holding on for dear life

  Tuesday was cool, the morning especially. And while working at the Book Nook I saw people dressed for two seasons -summer and fall. Lots of plaids, flannel and boots or booties worn by customers that I assumed were anxious for fall. Not me. I'm holding on to summer for dear life. I wore a sleeveless dress, sandals and a cotton sweater. I mean here in Michigan we will be donning those fall duds and not showing skin again for at least eight months. And while I'm not good at a math, I know that eight months is most of the year. According to my calculator that's 66 percent of the year (66.666667 to be exact - my math 094 professor at MSU would be impressed that I knew that if I'd done it myself. But I'm smart enough to use a calculator to come up with that - like I used to tell her every class "we don't need to know how to do that, we can just use a calculator". Pretty sure I wasn't her favorite).  Boy did I digress with that walk down memory lane. A...
2 comments
Read more