...which due to technical problems is late being posted this week. We apologize.
In my opinion...
Any pain or chronic health problems we have to deal with have an impact on everyone around us; friends, children, husbands, and sometimes even neighbours or people we barely know. Since my children are now adults with their own homes, I really didn’t think much about the impact my accident would have on them. I knew they were worried, but until my daughter made a rather off-hand remark during a conversation, I had no idea how deeply my accident had affected her. I, of course, felt terrible that I had added to her stress level, but wasn’t quite sure what to do or how to make her feel better about it.
When the light bulb finally went on, it was a relatively simple solution; let her help me. I know that sounds pretty simple, but I’ve always had a problem accepting help. Unfortunately with six fractured vertebrae, I really had no choice. The trick was to accept help graciously. It took a bit of time, but when I realized that by letting people help me, I was helping them in turn, it was much easier to accept. I know that when I’m worried, action is what I need, so obviously they needed to do something to made them feel they were a part of the healing process. I learned to accept help from everyone to do the million and one other tasks I was unable to handle myself.
Let those who care help. That way everyone wins.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Mondays with Marlene
In my opinion ...
Lots of things change when you are incapacitated and in pain. In fact, almost everything changes, but there is a way to do most daily tasks; ask for advice from your health care professional, think outside the box or just brain storm with friends and family. Mind you, you don’t want to ask the kids for advice on how to have sex with their dad, but it’s surprising what young minds come up with to solve some of those everyday problems. Since my husband and I are retired and don’t have any young ones running around the house, we’ve tried to figure things out for ourselves, often by trial and error. One thing I always did, though, was to ask my healthcare-givers if it was safe for me to do things such as vacuum, do laundry and clean toilets (the housecleaning triathlon)
Since I’ve been called a neat freak more than once in my life, you can imagine that watching dust bunnies grow under the bed pretty much made me crazy, so I had to figure out how to clean the house. What ended up working well for me, was a great husband who is probably the best string mop floor washer in the world, and breaking the job up into do-able increments. That was a challenge in itself since I’ve never in my life broken any job into small increments, but now I had no choice. I ended up dusting one day, cleaning the bathroom, kitchen sink and so on the second and vacuuming, which I found very hard, the third day and then my husband washed the floors. Presto – small increments from a “do it all now or the world will end type of gal” and I had a clean house. In fact it worked so well even though I am able to do more now, I still clean the same way. It made so much sense that I don’t ever want to put a full day into housecleaning again.
Another item that was a great help, especially early on in the relearning process, was one of those reacher things. I don’t know what they are really called but there is a handle and a trigger and a gripper so you can reach things that are too high for you and being me, I even used it to pick up bits and pieces off the floor, or the magazine I dropped or a few times to pinch my sweet husband right on the butt. Now that’s thinking outside the box! You can do it too.
Lots of things change when you are incapacitated and in pain. In fact, almost everything changes, but there is a way to do most daily tasks; ask for advice from your health care professional, think outside the box or just brain storm with friends and family. Mind you, you don’t want to ask the kids for advice on how to have sex with their dad, but it’s surprising what young minds come up with to solve some of those everyday problems. Since my husband and I are retired and don’t have any young ones running around the house, we’ve tried to figure things out for ourselves, often by trial and error. One thing I always did, though, was to ask my healthcare-givers if it was safe for me to do things such as vacuum, do laundry and clean toilets (the housecleaning triathlon)
Since I’ve been called a neat freak more than once in my life, you can imagine that watching dust bunnies grow under the bed pretty much made me crazy, so I had to figure out how to clean the house. What ended up working well for me, was a great husband who is probably the best string mop floor washer in the world, and breaking the job up into do-able increments. That was a challenge in itself since I’ve never in my life broken any job into small increments, but now I had no choice. I ended up dusting one day, cleaning the bathroom, kitchen sink and so on the second and vacuuming, which I found very hard, the third day and then my husband washed the floors. Presto – small increments from a “do it all now or the world will end type of gal” and I had a clean house. In fact it worked so well even though I am able to do more now, I still clean the same way. It made so much sense that I don’t ever want to put a full day into housecleaning again.
Another item that was a great help, especially early on in the relearning process, was one of those reacher things. I don’t know what they are really called but there is a handle and a trigger and a gripper so you can reach things that are too high for you and being me, I even used it to pick up bits and pieces off the floor, or the magazine I dropped or a few times to pinch my sweet husband right on the butt. Now that’s thinking outside the box! You can do it too.
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