Fibro Hell

The Frog is the handle on a cane that I purchased off of eBay. Handcrafted with care, he was amazingly inexpensive like a cheap, but incredible date. He is carved delicately into a seemingly poisonous Amazonian forest frog, with deceptively smiling yellow eyes.

He looks like something that a child might play with, except for the one thing that gives him away as being a medical device: the black rubber stopper at the bottom, intended to stop its user from putting their weight on The Frog and consequently having it slide out from underneath them, leaving them in far worse crutches, casts, or a wheelchair (which I also have one of--it's bright red and pretty saucy for a wheelchair, if I do say so myself!).

My intention of buying such an over-the-top cane was simple: a conversational piece, something to laugh about with strangers while waiting in line at the grocery store--an inanimate object that might attract the attention of curious children. A relatively normal and healthy looking 26 year old young lady should not be supported by a cane. The few times that I have had to roll in my fire-red speed racer or lean on my husband or a friend for support, people usually have two emotions written clearly on their faces: curiosity and pity. With The Frog, I hoped to at least elicit some smiles, laughter, and perhaps even some gimp envy.

Hell, I don't look like a cripple. In fact, when I'm having a "good day," my walk is fine and I pass for a healthy chick, happily sauntering through life, maybe with a mild quirk in her step. Shoot, I can even get away with looking like I'm completely "normal" even when I'm going through a flare-up, if I try hard enough, or if I'm sitting down. If I hide The Frog somewhere, no one would be the wiser.

Perhaps, it's because I always put effort into my appearance and have a healthy looking flushed "peaches and cream" complexion that always gets noticed and consequently complemented on by little old ladies. The only thing that's missing is them reaching up and pinching my pink cheeks with their prune-like fingertips (which some of them HAVE been known to try and do on occasion).

No matter how crappy I'm feeling, I always take the time, even if it's a painfully (pun intended) slow process, to look put together. Some days, when it takes 5 minutes to limp over from the bedroom to the living room (which I may add is probably a whopping 20 feet away), I can take anywhere from two to three hours to get ready. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Or something like that anyway.

There are some major obstacles on days such as this. Showering is a whole process; just getting in and out of the tub is often times grueling, but for the most part, I refuse to ask for help from my husband in getting in and out of it. I mean, I may be 26 and physically messed up, but I absolutely refuse (unless I have been straining, plotting, and finagling for, say, an hour by myself or am about to suffer from hypothermia--whichever comes first) to yell out to him across our small apartment, "I'm in the tub and I can't get out! Can you please help me?"

To me, this is but a mere fraction of a word away from the not so distant, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" Images of commercials for those bracelet/alarms for fallen old folks immediately get conjured up--a blue haired hag screeching as she lays sprawled across the bathroom floor.

Whenever it gets this bad, I struggle with seemingly effortless tasks. Bathing becomes an arduous task, the tub morphing into some sort of a daunting wall, something that newbie Marines have to get over in order to pass boot camp--not a two and a half foot tall piece of white porcelain that one bathes in. It sounds ridiculous when I think about it. Such a small, simple task that most everyone takes for granted, usually at least once a day, yet for me, on days when even the slightest touch from a loved one feels like fire, it is anything but.