Discharged from Sloan-Kettering after two weeks of bed rest, I was an atrophied version of my sixteen-year-old self. Atrophied physically from lack of exercise and loss of muscle tone, but also somewhat in spirit. I sported a toe-to-thigh fiberglass cast that immobilized my right leg; my left was graced with a wicked scar. (My surgeon did not give a hoot for the aesthetics of his sutures; he was no plastics man). Weakened, in pain, but nonetheless happy to be leaving, I was wheeled through the hospital doors in a chair, then driven to our family home in Southport, Connecticut. It didn't feel like home to me; my parents had moved to Connecticut when I was away in boarding school. I knew no one there and felt isolated. And then there was the problem of autonomy, or lack thereof. Independent from day one, the family joke is that I "moved out of the house" for the first time the day I was born—two months early and put in an incubator where I "lived alone" for the first six weeks of my life. And sixteen is not an age that begs for reliance. But there were plenty of things I could not do for myself, and during those first couple days at home, that included going upstairs. The house had two floors, and if I recall correctly, I was pretty much confined to the ground level until a physical therapist could come and help me build back enough muscle strength and teach me how to properly navigate stairs on crutches. I don't know where the PT came from, but come she did, from some healthcare agency or other. I don't remember much about her, except that she was a woman of probably late middle age (she seemed old to me, but that was through the filter of a teenage mind; everyone over thirty looked old). Her skin was white, her manners Puritanical. She got me on the stairs. I remember I had gone up halfway and was turning to come back down. Confused momentarily about how to do it, here is the handy memory device she gave: "Just remember, it's like Heaven and Hell." I could hear the capital letters; this was a woman who believed these were proper nouns, names of physical places and not just states of mind. "When you go up, you lead with the good leg, like going up to Heaven. When you go down, you go bad leg first. Up with the Good, down with the Bad." I know I looked at her like she was crazy. I think I decided right then and there that I would go no farther with her. I don't remember what exactly I said, but I do know that the message was a perfect extension of her own metaphor: in so many words, I told her she could go on "down." She could just plain go to hell.
The worst kind of prejudice is the kind that slips under the radar. It's too subtle to cause a stir (and if you point it out, you'll usually get a sideways look: you're the one making too much of nothing), but its corrosive message nevertheless seeps in—subliminally, insidiously—beating down the spirit of the group it belittles or excludes. I am blessed to have been raised by two parents who were sensitive to prejudicial undercurrents; they fought against them in their own distinct ways through the tumultuous 1960s, and into the 70s and 80s as I was growing up. And it seems, thinking about it now, that they never missed a good learning moment with me: we often discussed issues of bias, prejudice, stereotype, and their harmful effects. This week, images in some of my kindergartener's reading books gave me pause. And in wrestling with how to handle these, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in many years: the library at the Brentwood Science Magnet School in ...
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It's funny, I was taught that same little saying when I was a Physical Therapy student. I've lost count how many times I've repeated since.
i have been immobile for the last week due to lower back pain and have spent most of it lying down. it's been demoralising to say the least
To my Kiwi friend, I hope you're better soon.
To Colorado PT, thanks for posting! It's interesting to know that the little saying I railed against was not particular to that one woman who visited our house, but rather something that a generation or more of PT students were taught. (Not sure: was it just the "up = good and down = bad" language, or was it expressed in terms of religious afterlife as well?)
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