Monday Blessings

She arrives with her busia and sits next to me during our hour together, twirling on the rolling swivel stool positioned next to me. I discuss shoulder pain and improving movement with her busia before commenting on Isobella's sequined high tops or Hello Kitty dress or the height of her pony tail of thick curly brown hair. She waits patiently, observing the gym that she calls "Isobella's Fearless Gym". You know, for when she grows up and owns the world.

I wait until her busia is performing the correct set of exercises before asking her what she learned in third grade today. I don't get a shrug or a "nothing" as often happens with many kids. Instead she takes a deep breath and for the next hour she spills out the events of her day. Her busia playfully rolls her eyes at me every once and a while. "Ay-e-ay, Isobella, how you talk and talk and talk," she says. Isobella tells us about every book she is reading, how today was anti-bully day and that she wore pink for the occasion and that she once stood up for a friend who was being picked on at recess. Her favorite day of the year is when she can go to school in her pajamas and read all day. Today she learned that President Lincoln is super tall. "Like, 5 foot 6 inches!" Her busia and I try to reason with her that Abe was a little taller than 5 foot but she shakes her head and her gigantic pony tail swishes like it is swatting flies. "He was really tall. Maybe 5 foot 10 inches."

On President's day she announced her future plans for metamorphosis. "When I turn into a President one day, I will do important things. And then I will swim in my President swimming pool." Her busia and I press her to name some of these important things and she tells us about all the nonspecific meetings she plans on attending after her cook has prepared her a delicious breakfast. I persuade her to come up with better strategies to take care of health and the sick as her busia fumbles with picking up a highlighter. She pats her busia's back and tells her that she will consider it.

At the end of the session, after she has retrieved us water and participates in a game of toss and catch with her busia, I do some retesting on her busia's shoulder. Isobella sits with a pen and note pad taking notes. "How is she behaving today?"  she wants to know. I reply that  her busia is awesome but Isobella goes blank for a moment before scribbling on her pad of paper. "I don't know how to spell awesome so I will write she is good." When I am done tapping the supraspinatus, retracting the scapula, and digging into the lower trap, Isobella gives us her busia's report card. It literally reads: Good. Doing great. Good. Pretty good. Good girl. Her busia rolls her eyes again. "Oh, Isobella, how you go on and on and on." But her busia is smiling.

We learn to Fight

Collin and his team of therapists (Jenna, me, & Amy) December 2011

He is eating freshly baked chocolate chip cookies when I enter the kitchen this past Wednesday. Crumbs and chocolate smudge his lips that grin when I sit down next to him. I love to see him eat. I can recall so many hours in therapy and so many unsuccessful attempted bites of donuts and pizzas. Now, a little over one year, he craves chocolate chip cookies that his mother lovingly bakes into small bite size delciousness. We all share a handful of cookies, Collin, his mother, and me.

I tell them about all the new born babies in my life and Collin tells me stories he has been told by his mom about when he was a newborn. He was an easy baby, his mom confirms, who liked to rest on her shoulder so that he could get a good view of everything around him. I think its funny how sometimes a person is exactly who they are, even as a baby. Collin is still easy. He laughs easily, he smiles easily, and he plays easily (which is probably why we could become friends so easily).

After an hour of chatting and cookies, they tell me they have a surprise for me. They have been eagerly awaiting our game date with a new game to play. While his mom disappears to get the game, Collin extends his arms and his fingers wiggle as he tells me (dramatically): "This game has your name written all over it. We thought of you as soon as we played it." The game is Clue: the Simpsons version and he giggles when he shows me that Mr. Smitthers plays the role of "Mrs. White" and is wearing a maid dress. He assigns me to be Marge and I breath a sigh of relief when later I learn that I am not the suspect. Collin wins, as always, and I demand a hug before departing.

He is still small and sweet, wearing a Bears jerzey #33 and plans on resting before the math tutor arrives. I worry that I could crush him with my hug but I also know he is way tougher than me on a million levels. His bravery and persistence run circles around me. Over and over I've watched cancer do this to people- it's initial purpose to mutate and tear the body down- only to be met with our innate human response to resist and fight and push back. We (the others) gather and pray and hug the body that is warring from within. Together we bake and cry and find absolute beauty in minor moments. Cancer cannot win when the person and their family and community becomes fiercer, braver, and flooded with love/ prayers for the holy spirit. So damned if one hug from his occupational therapist would be something to bring him down. Hold. Tighter.

Please join me in prayer for Collin and his absolutely devoted family. 

*Permission granted to blog about Collin from his mother

Mascara

I have learned how to pinpoint the very day that my female patients start to "feel better". Whether they are healing from stroke, spinal cord injury, or brain cancer, the evidence is clear: It is the day they come to their therapy appointment wearing either earrings or eye make up. It is then that I know we've turned a corner. Things are improving. We are moving away from "primal survival" to "surviving... with aesthetic awareness". I want to celebrate these moments above any wedding day or sweet sixteen party. Our bodies are so beautiful and miraculous but also so fragile and vulnerable. The interplay between these mortal extremes is nothing less than heartbreakingly breathtaking and I get to experience it with strangers on an almost daily basis.

I meet Miss Janice* in the waiting room. She has a folded up New Yorker in her lap and an NPR mug brimming with coffee. She is a stunning, slender woman in her nineties and today she is wearing tall boots, brown tights, a wrap around dress with the neckline buried under a maroon scarf, and a long sweater. She carries her cane rather than allowing it to steady her (which make all the physical therapist's wince). I offer to carry her mug and I tell her "You look beautiful. Very fall-like." Her eye makeup is almost perfect. There is only one smudge at the corner of her right eye. She is always stoic. Every word that comes out of her mouth is thoughtful if not occasionally profound. (The opposite of my chain-of-errors-like-a-pearl-necklace speech patterns).

"I identify with fall. She resonates in me. I never understood summer. We never developed a relationship like I did with the season of fall." I nod. I understand. I am thrilled she is wearing eye liner.



*Name and some details changed/ fictionalized to maintain privacy

Fighting the Fight with Ponytails

She visits me in old Rancid concert t-shirts and perfect arching ponytails. Her cane has been decorated by her two young children who encourage her daily to "be different" and "be colorful" despite the new illness. And so we sit across from each other- I am encouraging arm strengthening and appropriate rest breaks between sets. "Can you write the exercises down for me?" she asks. I am embarrassed that I forgot to make a photocopy of the proper exercises as I had promised her last time we met. "I can draw you some super awesome stick figures doing the exercises," I say.

I pull out a lavender sheet of paper and I draw a stick figure holding a Theraband. The stick figure isn't quite a stick- she has a neck and lovely biceps that grow into hands that look like boxing gloves. I put the figure in a Rancid shirt and a massive side ponytail held in place by a gigantic scrunchy. "It's you," I tell her after drawing the first exercise and adding sweeping bangs to the forehead. "And you're smiling." I place a huge grin on the figure's face.

The next figure is bigger... I didn't mean to make her bigger. The pony tail is larger and the boxing gloves more refined. The next figure is even bigger. "She looks like she is actually moving! This has such great perspective!" my client exclaims and I admit, I've drawn a pretty dynamic ponytail. We are laughing uncontrollably as the next figure is even bigger. Scrunchies are everywhere and sweeping bangs could take over the world at this point. "I want to be this stick figure's friend!" my client says through snorts of laughter. "She's you!" I continue to convince her. "And she's still smiling!"

I finish my kitschy home exercise program and make her promise not to show anyone who wants to take me seriously. Ever. We are wiping tears from our eyes and I am so happy in these moments of "being helpful". I add an Everlast stamp to the boxing glove that is supposed to be a hand. "Keep on fighting the fight," I tell my clients after an hour's hard work. And you would not believe the champions I am honored to coach day in and day out. 

"The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die" -The Mountain Bed, Woodie Guthrie

(Still one of my all time favorite songs ever)

Angel

Gift from Elena, my four year old neighbor.

(Who also shares cake pops with me when I am gardening)

She stared down at the picture crossword puzzle blankly. The words were not gathering in her head- neither in Spanish nor English. She used to translate in hospitals and teach English but now each spoken or understood word was labor and often wrong. "You know what that is..." I tried to encourage her. "It has wings. They fly around in heaven. People have little statues of them in their car. Some people spray paint them on their shirts. They sometimes sing..." 

Her daughter looked over our shoulders at the illustration of an angel that her mother was stuck on. "Mom! It's me!" She explained that over the hundreds of hours she spent transporting her mother back and forth to doctor appointments and therapies, there was one day when her mother pointed at the ceiling of the car. Her daughter's wrist watch was reflecting the sun into an illuminated halo directly above the daughters head. 

"Your an angel," her mother responded. 

"I am definitely an angel." 

Goodbye first job

"Collin's Angels" aka therapy team

Me, Collin, Amy (SP) in cognito, Jenna (PT)

So.
Here's the thing: over the past five years of my life I have witnessed the amazing capacity of what the human mind and body can and cannot do. On a daily basis, I worked in a place where words like "motivated" "intense" "painful" "ambitious" "never ceasing" "making possibilities" are so common, they are status quo. When you are poured into a place where physical rehabilitation requires you to literally pull yourself off the floor by your very finger nails because half of your nervous system is no longer connecting your brain and body, all you can do is step back in absolute marvel at the human condition to fight and survive.

Yet here, in this little space I love to write, I can only allude to vague miracles and anonymous stories I have witnessed because my job is (thankfully) protected from professionals sharing personal information about those I am blessed to treat and know. It is a small quandry because healing stories are imprinted on me daily and yet, when I come here to write, I cannot share the wonders of the human body, the willpower of a brain, or how my heart hurts when I cannot help something that is beyond me.

Last month I resigned from a job that I still find awe inspiring. At this job, I adored having students because I could observe their enthusiasm and wonder for what they too were poured into. It was in that very job that I met some of my closest friends and was mentored by over twenty different therapists. I was profoundly aware that I was leaving a place where stories of "They pronounced me dead but then, minutes later and somehow, I started breathing again" or "This is my second chance at life" or "I think I'm most sad to be in this wheelchair [from half body paralysis] because I have such a gorgeous collection of high heeled shoes at home" is the norm. I left a team of therapists who were so dedicated to their jobs that they were treating patients even in their dreams. I left my job with a little red wagon (who I gave plenty of joy rides to my littlest patients during their therapy hour) full of my books, medical literature, Monika's oragami penguin she made for me in 2010, and dozens of cards and letters from grateful patients.

The good news: I took everyone I loved with me including Collin, the most memorable kiddo you could ever imagine, pictured above. His most lovely mom wrote me that although he was sad that we (his therapy team) eventually left, "at least they can now come over to my home!" Amy, Jenna, and I were invited over to Collin's home this Wednesday for a Christmas dinner and we received the royal treatment and a hundred giggles. And for this reason, I know that I was exactly in the right place for those five wonderful years. Thank you RIC.

* Published pictures with permission from family.