Reeve Foundation Paralysis Community

After a frustrating return to school that involved me withdrawing from a graduate program, wrangling help from a Dean to get admitted into a course at another school, serious lack of confidence issues, classmates who were openly contemptuous of my writing and opinions (I felt like I was back in junior high), a broken collar bone, surgery, 2 hospitalizations, family strife, ongoing headaches with my home care nurses, missed deadlines, begged extensions, a hostile prof, and now weather so cold it is literally making me want to cry, I managed to finish my  class!

I emailed in my last assignment (6 weeks late) just a few minutes ago. My work was very sub par and not what I am capable of and I fear my grade is going to reflect that and be very low. But at this point, that is really not something to worry about. I honestly didn't think I was going to get everything done. I almost withdrew several times; I had an easy out due to medical reasons. But I finished. And while the course as a whole was pretty much a flop (I realized that my learning style is really not at all suited for online courses); I did learn a lot about what I need to do to go back to school and be successful. This course was not really successful, I have to admit. But I can take a lot from it in terms of things I need to do better next time.

And next time will be a few short weeks since I found out the other day I have been given admission to another graduate program--one that I think will be much a better fit for me than the one I was enrolled in briefly this summer. At this point, unfortunately my collar bone has not healed enough to allow me to return to campus based courses as I hoped to in January. So it will be online courses for at least one more semester. But my new goal is to take a course on campus for the spring semester, which starts in May.

It is such a big relief to get this course done without needing to resort to a withdrawal. And even if I fail, the other program has offered me a definite acceptance based on my previous grades. So while my ego will probably be bruised, an expected bad grade in the course I just finished will not be the end of the world. I didn't tell anybody about the other acceptance because my confidence was so low and my interest in school waning that even until yesterday I wasn't sure I would accept the spot. December is not the best month for big decisions because, even though I have tried to push it out of my mind, the specter of the anniversary of my injury looming ahead feels like a black cloud overhead I can't shake. (Anniversary never seems the right word, but what other one do you use?) I don't really get why I should be so fixated on it, but unfortunately I am. However I have been able to lift some of that depression in the past week. Still have a long way to go though.

So despite my doubts, I sent in an email at 3 am this morning (I was up writing my last assignment) saying I wanted to accept the admission offer.

It has been a very rough return to school for me. It was much harder than I expected in terms of how I emotionally dealt with how my spinal cord injury meant I needed to modify things from the last time I was a student. That was a much bigger undertaking than I expected it to be and I needed a lot more assistance than I thought I would, even for one online course. I often needed to ask for somebody to type for me or to go out to the library very not convienant times. That has been a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that I couldn't even do this without a certain degree of dependency. But my family was great and very supportive and I wouldn't have been able to do this without them. I am very lucky they are willing to do what they can to help me get my life back on track.

It feels a little like I might finally going to be able moving forward again with my life after what felt like many false starts.

Once again, my good intentions to keep this blog updated on at least a semi-regular basis have fallen by the wayside. But tonight, needing an outlet after a totally frustrating day, I figured I should revisit my now rather lonely blog.

It seems that I am stuck in a very big rut lately and I don't know how to get out of it. Summer seems so long ago, yet the fall seems to be passing by quicker than I can handle. I have been trying to muddle my way through things, but in reality I am just not getting much done at all.

As I wrote about in a previous entry, I have attempted to resume my education this fall. I enrolled in an online course offered by a local university full of hope and expectations for myself. It quickly turned from something very positive into a massive stressor. I had a very difficult time adjusting to the nuances of online learning and the time management and discipline it required. On top of that after being out of school for almost 3 years due to my injury, I suffered a very serious confidence problem. My classmates seemed so much brighter than me and I felt they had so much more insightful things to say about the course readings than I did. I literally become fearful of posting on the course website forums for fear that everybody would realize I was stupid and a sham--somebody who didn't belong in the class. I began to avoid logging into the course website, something that was not good at all since that was entirely how the course was conducted. I began to fall behind on my readings because I would get overly anxious and borderline panic that I didn’t understand what I was reading. I would read and re-read things over and over, and with each reading become more anxious and further convinced I missing the author's point. Finally it reached the point that even just looking at the course material made me feel sick. The reality is I was fully capable of understanding the readings as well as making perfectly acceptable contributions to the class discussion. But I had myself convinced I could not. My instructor reached out to me to try to get me back on track but I began to even avoid opening his emails. I felt humiliated and figured I would have to withdraw or risk getting an F. I figured he was going to tell me he has booting me out of the class because I was so far behind. I thought he would assume my non-participation meant a lack of interest and a lack of motivation. I saw my attempt to resume my education as a total failure, saw myself as a total failure.

Yesterday I realized that my madness about this course had reached its limit. I was going to email the instructor and tell him I intended to withdraw. I finally opened the emails he had been sending me on a nearly daily basis. His last email included his home phone number and the encouragement to call him so we could together work out a way to get me back on track and able to finish the last 5 weeks of the class. Usually I will do anything I can to avoid calling people (do you see a pattern here? lol). I am one of those people who will purposefully call somebody when I know they are not home so I can just leave them a message. I do this even with the people I am closest too. I prefer email because writing seems easier. But in this case, I was even avoiding email. It took a lot of self convincing and I was hoping my instructor would be out and I could just leave him a message and tell him "That's okay I am just going to withdraw. But thanks very much for your help." It would have solved my school problem in one fell swoop. But of course he was home and he did answer his phone and I had to talk to him.

Long story made short: I think I have come up with a plan to get back on track and complete the course. There are still a lot of "ifs." I am currently recovering from a surgery to repair a broken collar bone (the subject for a different post) and that has severely hindered my energy and affected how much time I can spend on my laptop before regular doses of pain medication blur my mind. I continue to have problems concentrating and focusing even without the effects of the drugs. And I have an awful lot of work to catch up on in a very short span of time. An extension past the December 16 end of semester date may be possible and that would make things more doable perhaps and remove some of the pressure.

This evening when I was getting my evening care done and experiencing the regular annoyances and indignities that come with a spinal cord injury, I had a brief moment of doubt. I thought to myself "you have enough on your plate as is, why take on the extra stress of school?" It is a good question and one that several people asked me when started making plans to go back to school again. The truth is that as hard as it is trying to fit this course into my life right now and as much stress as it has caused me (and it has been a lot), I need this. I need something to feel like my life is not all about spinal cord injury and care routines and dealing with complications arising from my injury. And being a student again does give me a sense that I can be something more than my injury. So that is why I have to find a way to muddle through this right now. Even if I do end up withdrawing, at least I will know I tried.

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,/of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear."

These lines from a William Cullen Bryant poem have been running through my head today.

Since last Sunday we have been enjoying unseasonably high temperatures. Temperatures that are more common for June and July. While September is not typically a cold month here, weather this nice is relatively uncommon. At least for 7 straight days. It not for the fact that all the leaves on the trees are turning from green to yellow and red, it was possible to convince oneself that it still was summer and not two thirds of the way through September.

While everybody around me was delighting in weather, for much of the week it was a source of frustration and annoyance to me. I was stuck in bed nursing a sore. To say this had me grumpy would be an understatement. But I finally was able to get out on Friday and went for a stroll downtown. We followed a paved path that hugged the riverbank, crossed a pedestrian bridge over to an island park, meandered through the island itself, and stopped by a tiny cafe for some tea.

It was nice. There are no roads or development of any kind on the huge 20 hectare island, except for the cafe. An extensive paved path system meant I could go just about anywhere I wanted to. The river near the eastern part of the island has been landscaped into a sheltered lagoon, while the western tip is a wetland environment. The result is geese and ducks and a host of other birds are found in abundance all over the park. Watching as the ducks and geese loudly went about their business along the shoreline in what can only be described as controlled chaos made me smile. But it really was the trees that made the day so special. There was a slight breeze and a blizzard of colourful leaves swirled around and blanketed the ground. It really was beautiful to just sit and watch it.

But here is where the melancoliness comes in. I don't want summer to end. I don't want the colorful flowers to wilt and die or the trees to end up with bare branches or the river to become empty when all the birds migrate south to warmer climates. Although there were many ups and downs, it has been a good summer for me. Sitting on the banks of the river watching the geese chase each other and scold the ducks, I didn't want it to end. And although I was enjoying the outing to the park, I found myself feeling very melancholy. 

But I am not really sure why. I have lived in, or close to, this city for most of my life. I know we have short summers. Frost in the morning is common by the end of August. Snow will likely fall within a few weeks, even if it doesn't tend to stay on the ground for long until the end of November. It is just a fact of life here. But still I can't shake the rueful feeling that I have to say goodbye to the nice weather and the flowers and ducks. I might be very happy if the weather could stay exactly how it was on Friday. It wasn't too hot for me to be outside, as much of August had been. Nor was it so cold that I was miserable and buried under a mound of blankets and coats. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day.

But despite my desire to stop time and mother nature, and prevent the "wailing winds and naked woods" that Bryant's poem talks about, I realize that what he says is only partially true. It's a fact that no matter how badly I wish against it, the snow and ice are coming and will snuff out all the green. The fact that the warm weather ended today with rain and overly glooming skies just reinforces that. But it won't mean that everything is barren and lifeless. Winter, like the autumn I am witnessing now, compensates for that loss bu giving us its own beauty. And although it seems so far off now, after winter comes the return of spring and its reminder that life does indeed spring forth again from under the snow and ice. So it's not all that bad, I guess. And I do get to enjoy the spectacular burst of colour from the trees, as if they are saying "summer is short here but we will go out in a blaze of glory."

It all balances out. I just wish summer would hang around a bit longer...

(edited to add: I had hoped to add some pictures but the blog software will just let me attach one for now....its at the very bottom of the blog entry)

* Fors those who might be interested, the William Cullen Bryant poem that opened this post is called "The Death of the the Flowers." Cheerful stuff, huh? lol

It's a rather long poem so I am going going to post an excerpt and a link for anybody who might want to read the whole thing:

http://www.bartleby.com/102/20.html

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I always feel a bit awkward when it comes to introducing myself, whether I am doing it in person or in writing. I am never quite sure what to say about myself. But a blog must start somewhere, and it's usually helpful for the reader if the author at least gives a brief introduction to themselves and the reasons why they are blogging. So here it goes...

Who Am I?

A very short version is I am a 27 year old female from Canada. I think a more developed answer to that question will emerge as I post more on this blog. It is my hope/goal to post at least 3 times a week. So you might end up learning more about me than you ever wanted to!

Why Am I Here?

Another short answer:  I have a spinal cord injury. In December 2005 I was hurt  in a skiing accident that left me with a high level cervical injury. I try very hard not to this define who I am, but the reality is that my life very often feels like it now revolves completely around my paralysis. It really was only once I started connecting with others living with spinal cord injuries--learning about how they rebuilt their lives, returned to school and work, travelled, resumed former recreational activities, discovered new interests and hobbies, etc--that I realized that I could move forward from my injury.

But this wasn't something I was going to be able to do on my own. Belonging to a community where others can understand and share in both the triumphs and frustrations of life with a spinal cord injury--and maybe more importantly, of just life in general-- is very important to me.

I think what it really comes down to is I hope that my participation in this community--as a member, moderator, and blogger--will allow me to connect with others.

Why A Blog?

I guess I have probably already answered this question with what I wrote above. The main reason is I want to connect with others. For me it has always been easiest to make that connection through writing.

I am not really sure what direction this blog will take. I do have a personal blog that is read by a very small (but very dedicated) audience of family and friends. This is my first attempt at "public" blogging and I admit I am a little nervous about that. So I might have to ask you all to bear with me a bit while I "work out the kinks,"  so to speak.

Until next time...