Believe in the Power of Work

If there were one thing I took with me from my time at Goodwill Industries International (GII) it is a deep and resounding belief in the organization’s slogan, “Believe in the Power of Work”.

More than a mere marketing tag line, Believe in the Power of Work is the precept upon which the organization was founded. You may or may not know this, but Goodwill is much more than its well-known thrift stores. With the money brought in through selling donated goods in its thrift stores, Goodwill funds training programs and employment services that help people with disabilities and other barriers to employment find, and keep, jobs.

Rather than simply giving food and clothing to the destitute in his congregation, Reverend Edgar J. Helms, Goodwill’s founder, taught them skills that they could use to earn a living. His idea, much like the old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” was to prepare his parishioners for a lifetime of self-sufficiency.

Helms believed in the power of work – in the dignity, purpose, and self worth it could afford a person. I believe in the power of work, for the very same reasons.

I left my position at GII’s Member Services Center (MSC) in September 2008 for several reasons, foremost among them being the time requirements of thrice-weekly trips to Baltimore for the ICSCI therapy program. Initially, I’d attempted to handle both – I reduced my work schedule to 20 hours a week, going in to the office on non-therapy days (Monday and Thursday) and working two hours from home in the mornings before I left for therapy on the other days.

Clearly, I had overestimated my own stamina. After six weeks of this hectic schedule, feeling all the while as if I were not giving my full attention to either my work or my recovery, I was faced with a decision. Seeing as how I’d waited more than half my life for the opportunity for recovery the ICSCI offered, there really wasn’t that much consternation over it. I tendered my resignation and immersed myself fully in the therapy. I focused on learning as much as I possibly could about every aspect of it (theory, mechanics, etc.) as I went along. Not only was I physically involved, but mentally engaged as well. Suffice it to say, therapy occupied all of my mental and physical time and energy. Sure, I missed some of my Goodwill friends, but I was too busy to think too much about the job I left. Therapy became my full-time job.

That changed in March 2009.

Although my regular PT appointments ended on January 30, OT was extended to two-hour sessions and continued through February 28. On March 1, I was on my own.

All at once, my full-time job had become a freelance, work-at-home job. My past experience as a freelance writer tells me that this is not the optimal position for me – I don’t do so well when the only person I have to answer to is myself.

I was very well prepared, during my course of therapy at KKI, for continuing my therapy at home. Indeed, much of the therapeutic goal was to develop a program I could do on my own. Cara had created a meticulously-detailed physical therapy book for me that outlines different aspects of my home therapy program – exercises, stretches, e-stim specs, etc.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the sudden absence of a meaningful objective in my life. Some might argue that recovery is a meaningful objective, and I’m inclined to agree – to an extent. Going into this situation, I was sure it would be enough to keep me busy – but what I’ve discovered is that “busy” does not necessarily mean mentally engaged, and too much self-focus is not a good thing.

When I was working, my goals and objectives were clear – each had a beginning, middle, and end. Each project or writing assignment had a starting point, a process or method to follow while I worked, and a resolution when I was finished.

Conversely, the path to recovery stretches out, horizonless, before me, with no end in sight. It is a daunting undertaking, one that has an indeterminate, unforeseeable outcome – if there is, in fact, an end to be reached.

Holidays

I'm sitting on the corner of Reedie Drive and Georgia Avenue, watching the sky above Dunkin Donuts explode in bursts of color. 

Rich and I reckoned the fireworks display at Einstein High School, just under 1.5 miles away, should be visible from here, and opted to forego struggling through the patriotic throngs sure to converge on the school at the first glimmers of twilight, perhaps earlier.   Indeed, a crowd has been slowly growing, a few people at a time, in the Safeway parking lot next door.  Thriller, which has been blaring from one of the cars since about 6 PM, is on its fourth or fifth iteration.  Apparently, it is the only album these devout Michael Jackson fans own.

We are only slightly disappointed by the visibility – or, lack thereof.  We can make out most, or at least the crest, of each fulgurant bloom between two tall buildings and over a cluster of treetops.

Having always been enamored with any sort of pyrotechnics, Rich is able to forgive the various encroachments on the periphery of his view.  His fingers absent-mindedly trace circles between my shoulder blades as he enjoys the display.

I, on the other hand, have lost interest entirely.  It is far more entertaining to watch the crowd swarming excitedly around me.  I feel, and not for the first time, like the calm eye of a tumultuous storm – passive and sedentary amidst so much kinetic energy.

The young family at my right seem enthralled by what they can see of the fireworks.  The father, likely in his late 20s, hoisted his 3-year-old son up on to his shoulders just as the first sparks cut into the darkening sky.  The mother stands pressed to his side, her arm looped through his.  The boy, clearly delighted with his elevated vantage point, squeals with delight and claps his hands as each new rocket is launched, screaming, into the sky and explodes with a loud bang.

I remember that.  I remember waiting the whole day, eagerly anticipating nightfall, when my sisters and I would pile into the family station wagon and go to watch the fireworks.  It's that same thrill, that same exuberance, that I see on the boy's face.

It's that same thrill, that same exuberance, that I have long since lost.

The 4th of July was the first holiday after I was injured. Watching the fireworks that year was very important to me. Two thousand miles from friends and family, I longed for some sense of normality. I wanted desperately for something, anything, familiar to reassure me that the world was still there, just as I’d left it, and everything would be okay. Life went on; my life would go on.

Holidays were big at Craig Hospital; I wasn’t the only one who sought solace in the familiarity of tradition. It was less than a week since I’d arrived at the rehab hospital, and I was still very sick. On the 4th of July, the staff often took the patients who weren’t well enough to go on the fireworks outing up to the roof to watch the local fireworks display. That night, they put me into a high-back manual wheelchair, bundled me up under several hospital blankets, set my portable respirator on a shelf under the back of the chair, and took my parents and me up to the roof. Three different displays were firing off simultaneously, so we could see the brilliant explosions in any direction we turned.

It should have been thrilling – the rockets, streaking up through the air and erupting into glimmering dandelion puffs over the Rocky Mountains before fading into the inky sky, smoky billows carried away by a gently stirring breeze. Indeed, it was the most elaborate fireworks display I had ever seen. Yet I felt oddly, inexplicably, detached.

Meh.

Whatever.

I tried to conjure some semblance of excitement for my parents, who needed some reassuring of their own at the time. I made as if I were having fun, though I was entirely underwhelmed.

For years, I’ve attributed my reaction, on that first post-injury holiday, to a combination of shock and medication. I did, after all, spend the first few months after the accident in a stunned haze of confusion.

As I watch the delight of this young boy, the excitement of his parents, and the fervor permeating the crowd around us, I realize that that was not the case at all. Though shock and medication were no doubt contributing factors to my lackluster reaction, they did not account for all the holidays since.

People who have depression are known to have great difficulty with holidays. I’ve heard this difficulty attributed to loneliness, stress, anxiety, and other rather vague causes. What I now realize is that depression becomes more acute on holidays because the thrill is gone. Everything that made the holiday special is gone. Anticipation? Gone. Excitement? Gone. Enjoyment? Gone. What is there, what has taken the place of all these happy holiday experiences, is the knowledge of what was once there and the stark contrast of its absence.

Play On

Today is Kevin's birthday. Had he survived the accident, he'd be 35. I think of him every day; I don't want him to be lost, to slip away into the ether like some forgotten character in a misplaced book. So,I keep him – what vestiges linger after so many years – in mind. It's a shame that I didn't know him longer, that I don't have more to hold on to. It's a shame, too, that others didn't have the opportunity to know him.

Previously, I haven't introduced any of the flashback episodes – I prefer to let them stand on their own – however, I feel this one warrants some context. The following piece (as are the other flashback episodes in this blog) is an excerpt from the memior I was writing during grad achool. It's taken from the first chapter, which is written from my 17-year-old perspective, and details the events of May 25, 1991. It leaves off where my memory of that night ends (the next chapter picks up when I awake in the hospital).

---

The Blue Canoe – a 1980 Country Squire station wagon – rolls up to a spot in the lot outside Tim's townhouse.

"Shaggy!" I'm out the door and bounding down the steps to greet him.

For the longest while, Kevin seemed mildly annoyed when I called him Shaggy. I'd been trying to figure out for weeks who it was that he reminded me of, and it just popped out one day, not long after I met him. We were in the band room after school, before Jazz Band practice, when he said something distinctly Scooby-Dooish. From behind the old beat up piano, before I was aware the association had been made in my head, the word popped out of my mouth – "Shaggy!" The name had been right there, hiding under my tongue, but I just couldn't seem to get to it. And then, Zoiks! , it hit me in the head and knocked the word right out before I even realized that was it.

Apparently others saw the resemblance, and from that day, the name stuck. Kevin was none too happy about it. Finally, one day, when he seemed to be genuinely angry after the fourth person in as many minutes passed by him and said, 'Hey, Shaggy!' I said, "Kevin, if it really bugs you, I'll stop calling you that."

He said he didn't mind a bit when I said it, but when the moniker caught on with everybody else who knew him, and more or less replaced his given name, that's when it began to bother him a little. I could call him Shaggy. Everyone else was told to shut up.

The affectionate nickname was not my only transgression against Kevin's name. My first offense was when Mike, a mutual friend, introduced us.

"Vicki, this is Kevin Arrowsmith," Mike had said.

My face lit up in recognition; but before I could ask, "You mean, like the band?!" Mike quickly jumped in.

"Different spelling. A-r-r-o-w, not A-e-r-o".

"Ah," I'd said, still smiling like an idiot at the similarity.

Fortunately, Kevin managed to look past my doofosity, and we became good friends.

Kevin's got a great sense of humor. Good Counsel's dress code isn't specific about ties, and Kevin often wears the uniform tie from his after-school job at Giant to school – dark blue, with big white G's, the word GIANT written across each in red lettering. I once asked him, "What's up with the Giant tie, Kevin?" He just smiled at me and said, "Ever notice where a tie points?"




"Shotgun!" I yell, and go for the dingy silver door handle on Kevin's car.

"No way!" Tim squeaks, close behind me. "You always get shotgun!"

"That's because I'm cuter than you are," I say smugly, and open the door.

There's a sharp shove in my back, and I lose my grip on the handle. Tim pushes me aside and scrambles for the door.

"Bastard!" I regain my footing and shove him back. "Bastards in the back! That means you!"

Tim laughs, grabs my hands so I can't open the door. "Nuh-uh! You!"

I wrestle free of him. "Ok, Kevin, who rides shotgun?"

"Aaaw, man! That's not fair!" Tim says.

I cross my arms, give Kevin my best pouty face.

"That's cheating! That's so not fair! C'mon, Kev!" he pleads, probably hoping to win Kevin over with some testosterone-imbued innuendo of male-bonding.

Kevin looks at Tim, then at me, then back at Tim. He shrugs. "Like you'd pick any different?"

"Thought so," I smile, and hop in front.

Another sudden shove at my back, I'm pressed to the inside of the open door. Tim scurries in behind me. He sits on the broad bench car seat, grinning up at me, more like Garfield than the Cheshire Cat.

"Fine, be a pain," I say, and slide in beside him. "Now you've got to sit in the middle! Ha!"

"Amazon bitch," Tim mutters under his breath.

"Keebler Elf," I say.

"Bite me."

"You wish."

Kevin laughs at us and gets back into the driver's side. He puts the key into the ignition, but doesn't turn the car on.

"Seatbelts," he says.

I tug on the pale blue shoulder harness to demonstrate it is fastened. "Way ahead of ya." I know that Kevin will not budge unless everyone has their seatbelts on. I always wear one, anyway.

I look over at Tim. "Ha! You don't have one!" The seatbelt for the center front seat is buried somewhere in the deep crevice between the seat and its back.

Kevin looks down at Tim's lack of seatbelt. He jerks his thumb toward the back seat. "Ok, in back."

"Fine," Tim finally relents, and hops over the seat into the back. "But if I've got to sit back here, so do you!" he says, and tries to pull me over with him.

My seatbelt holds me in place. I stick out my tongue at him. "Saved by the seatbelt!" I say triumphantly, and we pull out on to Bowie Mill Road.

On the way to the music store, Tim and I explain our plans to form a band to Kevin. He's in. By the time we arrive at Lakeforest, the mall is just about to close. We manage to sneak into Sam Goody and browse the sheet music for about fifteen minutes before an acne-faced clerk with long stringy hair chases us out of the store.

"We're closing up," he says, after not-so-subtly clearing his throat to get our attention. Kevin, Tim, and I are deeply immersed in a discussion of the musical genius of Led Zeppelin as we leaf through an anthology of their greatest hits.

I peer down the long aisles of shrink-wrapped tapes and CDs and check the front of the store. Another bored-looking clerk hangs onto the bottom of a large metal gate, which he has pulled half-way down over the store's opening into the eerily vacant mall.

I buy sheet music for a few songs I've been wanting to learn – though I'm disappointed not to find any arrangements by George Winston – but we haven't found anything the three of us agree on, and decide to come back tomorrow, when we'll have more time to peruse the offerings.

Walking out of the air-conditioned mall into the unusually warm night is only slightly unpleasant; the sweltering heat of the day has disintegrated into thick, humid night air that clings to our skin, but it is no longer unbearable. Once I'm over the initial shock of the transition from artificially cold to unnaturally hot, it's really not so bad. Somebody mentions a carnival of some sort going on tonight, right across Rockville Pike from the mall, at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. It wasn't the county fair; we knew that wasn't until late August.

The three of us, along with my friend Mary, had stopped by a small carnival held at a golf course in Olney last weekend, and we'd had a good time. Kevin fed Mary and I quarters as we bought chance after chance to throw darts at a corkboard covered with three rows of brightly colored balloons. Finally, we'd hit enough of them to claim our prize – a black and white poster depicting a shirtless, impeccably-chiseled guy in low-slung jeans, over the caption "All Men Are NOT Created Equal".

Kevin looked genuinely disgusted. "You mean I paid for that?"

"Well, you also got to laugh at our lousy dart-throwing abilities," I said.

"They can laugh all they want," Mary said, leering at our prize with a salacious grin that looked almost obscenely misplaced on her otherwise angelic features – sky blue eyes and pale skin surrounded by a halo of blond hair. "I don't care. This guy is hot!"

Mary and I immediately dubbed the poster guy "Derek". It just seemed like the name a hot guy would have. Looking at the poster, it certainly fit him. We'd carried Derek around as Kevin and Tim glared balefully at him, and had a custody battle over him on the way home in the car. I'd get to keep Derek for this month, and Mary would get him next month; we'd switch back and forth. The arrangement seemed to go over just fine with Derek.

And the suggestion to stop by the carnival at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds goes over just fine with me. The three of us hop into the Blue Canoe – no quibbling over the front seat this time, since it's such a short ride – and go to see what there is to see.

Turns out there really isn't much to be seen. Just a few carnival games set up, a collection of rickety-looking rides with long lines spurring out of them, and swarms of people pulsing through the walkways en masse.

We take a cursory stroll around the grounds, hoping to stumble into something or someone interesting, but as we complete our circumnavigation it is apparent that we're out of luck.

"Well worth the price of admission," Kevin laughs as we're absorbed into the heart of a swarm headed toward the entrance/exit gate. A large white square with "$5" painted in green hangs over the ticket booth, to the right of the gate. Tim and I laugh along with him – we'd snuck in through a hole in the fence.

"Man, that was a bust," Kevin says as we walk down toward his car.

"Yeah," I say absently, concentrating on stepping over the indentations that mark the individual cement blocks in the sidewalk, trying to do so without being obvious about it. Don't step on a crack, break your mother's back drums through my head with each insidious crevice avoided. I've always been cautious about that – not superstitious, just cautious – ever since my mother was in a car accident when I was 7 and ended up in traction with slipped disks.

"Ugh. Why's it have to be so freakin' hot out?" Tim says. He lifts his Marlboro baseball hat enough to slip his hand under and push his dark, wavy hair back under it. He pulls his silver-rimmed glasses from his face and wipes the lenses with the end of his shirt. Before he puts them back on, he does a trademark Tim trick – lifts the collar of his T-shirt out, pulls it up so his head disappears, and wipes his face with the inside of his shirt.

"You're going to get stuck in there one day," Kevin says.

A quick mental image of Tim, his arms flailing wildly from the sides of his headless torso, flits through my mind and I stifle a giggle.

"Can't help it," Tim grumbles, "I hate the hot weather."

Warm air clinging close about me, I can understand what he means. It is warm, close, damp; like something big had just licked us. You don't need to bother sweating when you go outside; the atmosphere wraps your body in its clamminess for you.

"Hey," I say, looking at my watch, "It's only a bit past ten, not so late. Why don't we go to my house and go swimming?" I didn't think my mom would mind. I had to be in by 11, and this way I would be home. She hadn't said anything about bringing anyone with me.

"Yeah, that sounds cool," Kevin says.

"Shotgun!" Tim says. He sprints the last hundred yards across the rocky parking lot toward Kevin's car.

"No way!" I say, and take off after him. I catch up easily and pass him quickly. For all the teasing I've endured about it, that's one advantage of being tall – longer legs means bigger strides. I can cover a lot more ground than Tim can, and at a much faster pace. I lean against the passenger door and wait for Tim to catch up to me. Kevin, uninterested in our childish display, strolls at an unaltered pace behind Tim.

"Amazon bitch," Tim growls when he catches up. He leans, chuffing, against the car.

I smile sweetly at him. "Aw, it's ok," I say, patting him on top of the head. "You'll grow up to be a big boy one day."

He gives me the finger, and lights up a cigarette. I debate making the remark about smoking stunting your growth, but decide to keep it to myself this time. Besides, I was walking proof to the contrary. If it did stunt your growth, then I was thankful – otherwise I'd be over six feet by now.

Kevin eventually catches up to us, wearing an impish grin. "Don't know what you two are in such a hurry about," he says. "We're not going anywhere till I find my keys."

We all check our pockets, although I know I don't have them. After ten minutes scouring the car, scrounging around in the dusty gravel of the parking lot, retracing our path up the sidewalk and through the grass, we see the faint glimmer of metal, glinting off the headlights of a passing car, between long blades of grass that grew wild and scraggly along the chain-link fence. A relatively small wad of keys sits in the dirt, not a foot from the jagged, narrow opening in the fence.

Tim puts up only a half-hearted attempt to claim the front seat for the ride home before he yields. "I was up at 6AM for work this morning," he says as he hops over the back seat into the flat cargo area at the rear of the station wagon. "I'm beat. I'm taking a nap."

I slip into the front seat beside Kevin with a complacent smile. We fasten our seatbelts, and Kevin fires up the Blue Canoe, guiding it out of the parking lot and sailing us into the warm summer night.

Scattered Updates

So much going on, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

I haven't published anything for a few weeks, but not because I haven't been writing. Several posts are in varying stages of completeness, but something always seems to usurp my attention, demanding to take precedence, and I'm off to write about that topic -- determined, of course, to resume the abandoned post, but usually return to find the material to have become outdated in the interim. It's a vicious cycle.

So, I've decided to abandon form and structure and fire off a rather superficial list of all that has been keeping me up at night.

My last day of physical therapy was Friday, January 30 (though I missed that day due to van crappery so, technically, it was Tuesday, February 3).  The idea of stopping PT at KKI and beginning my home program has me rather despondent.  Being very much a creature of habit, it's unsettling when large parts of my day are removed.

My course of treatment for PT had been extended three times because I was doing so well.  First, I was due to end PT after eight weeks, on October 23, but I was doing so well and making so much progress that the date was extended to December 5, then again to January 30.  As Cara told me when I began therapy in July, "No one stays in therapy forever."  Still, I can't help but feel as if I've failed somehow -- failed to make progress significant enough to warrant another extension.  I feel as if I have disappointed -- likely because I, myself, am disappointed.

Mostly, I will miss working with Cara.  In addition to being the consummate therapist -- always encouraging, understanding, and full of great advice -- she has helped me achieve not only impossible improvements in my physical ability, but also a better understanding of myself and my disability.  I'd say she's as empathetic as anyone could be without actually being in a chair (a distinction I'm willing to grant very few people -- so far, only Rich has qualified).  I truly enjoy her company, and am lucky to have had her as a therapist when I embarked on this endeavor -- I am certain I would not have seen this degree of success without her.  Plus, she gets my nerdy, wry, snarky sense of humor and bravely fields the deluge of questions I come armed with to every therapy session -- who could ask for more?

My OT has been extended, and will continue through February 28.  I'm relieved I will still have the opportunity to work on reviving arm function with Kristin and Mike, and use the FES biking equipment before therapy.

I had another reevaluation with Dr. Becker on February 3, but I'm afraid it didn't go as well as I expected.  I'm certain my ASIA score will be lower on the pin-prick segment, though I'm not sure why.

My spasticity has gotten completely out of control, and it's become an impedance on my daily life. I'm causing damage to myself and my surroundings because my left arm becomes uncontrollable and hits my hand drive, so I run into things but can't stop myself.*  It's very frustrating. We've tried switching medications (to Zanaflex), and upping the dose of the medication (Baclofen) that I'm currently on, all to no avail. The increase in the strength of my spasticity could be attributed to stronger muscles from the work I've been doing in therapy, but Dr. Becker suspects a spinal cyst could be the cause.  An MRI will determine whether that is indeed the case.  If it's not, I'm afraid I'll be relegated to a more aggressive method of addressing the spasticity issue than oral Baclofen.

After a DEXA scan, I've been diagnosed with osteoporosis.  It's common amongst SCIs, and thus expected I'd have it, but that doesn't make it suck any less.  Medication and continued therapeutic activity won't return my bones to proper density, but should help improve the density and prevent fractures.

In other news, I've finally gotten a replacement for my 1991 Ford van -- a comparably small minivan that is just great!  It's novel to have a vehicle with, among other things, a working dashboard clock.

And, finally, my apartment is ready!  I move in on Thursday, February 12.  Yay!

There's a brief run-down of all that which has been occupying my time and my mind.  These topics will all be revisited in greater depth in forthcoming posts.


* In fact, as I was typing this, I had a bad spasm and knocked over my desk, for the 11th time this week.

Ebb and flow

I've recently encountered my first therapy-related disappointment. I knew it would happen eventually. It was inevitable.

It was also self-induced – that is to say, I set myself up for it (albeit unintentionally).

It all began about three weeks ago (Tuesday, December 12), when I demonstrated my new-found biceps visibility for Mike (OT [he prefers the pronunciation "odie"]). I described how I'd been working on the muscle, flexing it repeatedly, trying to make it stronger.

Mike presented me with a challenge: Choose one of the muscles that I'd sensed returning, and work on it every day. The muscles in my right arm, and in my left forearm, though perceptible to me, are not 'usable' at this point; the most I can do is contract them. Mike told me to focus on one, flex it every day, 500 times.

Five hundred did, at first, sound like an awful lot. I think Mike intentionally set the bar high, but the number was downright intimidating, and I briefly wondered whether I'd be able to accomplish it. But, as quickly as it appeared, I dismissed the fleeting doubt in the firm resolution that I would reach that number.

I took on Mike's challenge with great enthusiasm. The fact that I can contract the biceps in my right arm at will is amazing, and I celebrate it each time I do. I was glad to have a goal to reach, rather than just working on the muscle in an intermittent and wholly unquantifiable fashion (which is what I had been doing). With Mike's guidance, I now had a method (i.e., counting) to track the work I was doing toward the goal on a daily basis; one by which I could measure future results. Suddenly, 500 didn't seem like such a preposterous number.

Originally, Mike suggested I do sets of 10, or 25, or even 50 if I felt I could, over the course of the day. That sounded like a feasible approach, and I intended to use it, until 10, then 25, then 50, then 100 came and went easily enough during the trip home that evening. I reached 500 with no problem. So, I've been doing 1,000.

After a week of doubling Mike's suggested strengthening exercises, my right biceps did indeed feel stronger (though a bit achy), and I eagerly anticipated seeing some demonstrable improvement during therapy that afternoon.

As I was hoping she would, Kristin (OT) suggested working with the arm skate. The arm skate is a simple piece of equipment designed to reduce the effects of gravity on the limb so the user can move his/her arm more easily. Much like its name suggests, it looks like a small skateboard.

As Kristin strapped my right forearm to the padded board, I was nearly brimming with confidence that I would slide it across the table beside me.

"Ok," she said, once the Velcro was in place, "Pull your arm in toward you."

I pulled, fully expecting it to move. Perhaps not easily, perhaps not far, but some sign of life. It didn't budge.

I pulled again.

Nothing.

I pulled again. Kristin put a slight amount of pressure on the far side of the board and it edged closer to me (as I understand it, that's for positive reinforcement, to help retrain the muscle), but I knew I was not effecting the forward motion myself.

I pulled again, as hard as I could, with every ounce of strength and conviction I could muster. My head throbbed; I suspected I might rupture a blood vessel in my brain from the effort.

Still, nothing.

"Breathe," Kristin prompted. "Your face is about the same color red as Cara's shirt."

I took in a breath and relaxed my jaw – which I hadn't even realized how hard I was clenching until that moment.

It was hard to hide my disappointment. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I wasn't expecting was to see my arm sitting there, not moving, just as it always does.

Two days later, after much internal strife, and relentless haranguing by Statler and Waldorf (you'll meet them soon), I mentioned the situation to Rich.

"You didn't really expect one week of exercises to make up for over 17 years of not using your arm, did you?" he asked.

I thought about it for a moment – as I had been doing for two days prior, but no new insight emerged.

"No," I finally relented. "Well, possibly. But, no. Not really. Perhaps just a little. Not so much expected, per se, as… hoped." I shrugged. "Dunno."

Two days' reflection had brought me no closer to understanding what I was disappointed in, or why. Clearly, I was being irrational, which was nearly as frustrating as my arm refusing to budge despite my best and repeated efforts.

In the days since, I've decided that it's not nearly as easy to temper my enthusiasm as I'd anticipated (or intended). Optimism has usurped my wariness, as it were. Bound to happen, I suppose – I've waited a long time for this.

This situation – waiting, uncertainty, hope, and disappointment – it's all seemed somehow familiar. I've been here before. Finally, I realized I have indeed been here – this reminds me very much of when I was in rehab. During those first few months, no one knew if, or what, I would recover (though the common consensus amongst my cadre of doctors and surgeons projected recovery as rather unlikely). I would often think, "Two weeks from now, I'll have my arms back." Then two weeks would come and go, and I'd set a new arbitrary date in my head. For some reason, it was usually two weeks. "Two weeks, and I'll probably have my hands back. Should start feeling them any time now."

Many, many sets of two weeks have come and gone, none of them ever bringing the anticipated recovery. Conviction waned; a little more slipped away with every missed date until, at some point, I stopped setting them. I stopped anticipating. I stopped hoping.

I've spent so long believing that regaining sensorimotor function was impossible that it was hard not to be incredulous in the beginning of the ICSCI program. Now that I've had some return, and it's squelched those nagging doubts, I think I've actually grown impatient. As I'm discovering new sensations, new connections, new movements, new abilities, I find myself thinking, "It's about time you showed up! I've been waiting! Now, hurry up and be useful!"