Category: Writing

The Mobility Chronicles: CP Edition [Part 2]

Amelia Hall # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

Back in January, I wrote a blog post and opened the door of my current mobility struggles, while simultaneously opening the floodgates of all the emotions associated with my declining mobility. In some ways, it feels like the level of those emotions has increased, but honestly, I think they are fears and concerns I’ve had my whole life, so now that they’ve come to light, it feels like I can’t even breathe some days because of my level of panic, anxiety, and unrelenting anger.

In between the time I wrote the initial post on this subject, I’ve gone back to physical therapy, which was a huge step for me. Past physical therapy experiences have resulted in a form of PTSD, so the fact that I was even able to walk in the building when I had my first appointment was a really big deal. I’ve only had two appointments with my new physical therapist, but so far, so good. During my initial appointment when I was evaluated, I spent 90% of the appointment discussing my past PT experiences, the panic and anxiety I now feel as a result of my past and the pain I experienced, as well as the experience I had when I returned to physical therapy 3 or 4 years ago for the first time since I was 16. To put it bluntly, returning to PT that time around didn’t go well. I had no idea I was going to have panic attacks, but I did, and they scared the crap out of me. Therefore, when I returned to physical therapy this time around, I knew what to expect in a sense. I was utterly terrified and it took a lot for me to even think about going, but I had a better idea of what my response would be.

Therefore, about a month before my initial evaluation appointment, I talked with my psychiatrist about my concerns, in the hopes that she could prescribe me with something that could at least take the edge off so I could walk in the door of the physical therapy clinic without having a panic attack. The fact that I even had to ask for a medication to help me made me feel weak. However, I have battled my depression and anxiety and been in mental health therapy long enough to know that sometimes talk therapy itself can’t 100% fix a problem, especially when it’s literally a chemical imbalance in your brain. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not one of those people who thinks the entire country should be medicated. However, all I know is that for me, the combination of talk therapy and medication has allowed me to be a functioning member of society without feeling completely debilitated by my anxiety and depression.

Anyway, upon returning to physical therapy, knowing I had something that could help me from totally going into a panic attack and not being able to get through the appointment was a relief. It was like knowing I had a safety net if I needed it. I will say, though, another huge part of returning was getting myself mentally prepared that physical therapy this time around would not be the same as physical therapy when I was 11 or 12 that required intense physical therapy post-surgery. For me, that meant creating mantras in my head, like “You are in control,” “If it hurts, you can’t tell them to stop,” and “If you have to get up and walk out, that’s okay.” In short, the mantras help, but so far it has meant repeating them in my head over and over for the entire hour of my appointment.

In short, each PT appointment forces me to face internal demons that I’ve been battling since childhood, and that shit is hard. I remember the day a few weeks ago when I went to my first appointment. I got through it, but for the rest of the day, I was in a very thick mental fog. I had built the appointment up in my head, expecting a continuous panic attack. Since that didn’t happen, my mind had to adjust to the fact that what I was preparing myself for for over a month wasn’t as intense as I was expecting. Despite that, facing these fears head on on a daily basis is exhausting. I’m sure that over time it’ll get easier, but for now, it just sucks. It doesn’t feel fair. I shouldn’t have to have such an intense internal battle with myself on a daily basis, and yet, here we are.

Recently, I discussed my anger surrounding my declining mobility and having to use a walker with my mental therapist. In short, I’m infuriated with myself and my body constantly. I hate that my mobility has reached this point. I’m pissed that I didn’t do more to hold off this moment for as long as I could. It literally makes me want to scream and cry, simultaneously, on a daily basis. It’s not fair. I shouldn’t have to deal with this now. I thought I had 10 more good years of independent mobility without having to depend on the assistance of a mobility aid. But the universe had other plans.

To be honest, facing my declining mobility as a result of my disability feels like the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The simple fact of feeling like I am being continuously “mentally tested” on a daily basis is enough for even the most mentally strong individuals to take pause. So, today, I’m taking pause. I’ll pick up the fight again tomorrow.

Categories: Cerebral Palsy, Disability, Mental Health, Writing8 Comments

The Reality of PTSD as a Result of My Disability

Amelia Hall # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

*This post was originally posted on my first blog. I felt like it was applicable to the fear and anxiety I still have related to my past. I’m working through it of course, but change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s just one day at a time.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been a nervous person. Along with those nerves, I was also very scared, especially as a kid. Rather than using the word “fears,” I was simply told by my parents and my doctors that I had a “vivid imagination.”

Because of this vivid imagination, I remember one specific time when I was 12 and my parents waited a while before they told me about a specific scheduled surgery. I understand now that they didn’t want to alert me to it too far in advance because they knew I’d essentially be a nervous wreck right up until I had to go in for surgery. Though I can understand this now and I know it was a protective measure, I didn’t see it that way when it happened. I remember the night my parents sat me down to tell me about a surgery that would be occurring in about a month. I couldn’t exactly comprehend at first that my parents had waited to tell me, but once I did I immediately started to worry. Not long after that moment, the dreams I would always have leading up to a big operation started. The most common, of course, was the dream in which I woke up during surgery.

Due to my “vivid imagination,” my dreams were exceptionally vivid. In my dream, I was lying on the operating table. My eyes were open, and I was seeing everything. The doctors had the femur of my left leg in their hands, and they were twisting it to the left in order to straighten it out. Though I couldn’t feel any pain in the dream, I could imagine it, which was almost as bad. I looked at the doctor’s gloves, which were covered in blood, my blood. In a room as white as the operating room, the red seemed out of place. And yet, there it was. On the doctor’s hands was the blood that ran through my very veins. As I watched the doctors attempt to “fix” what was “not normal,” I tried to scream out. My mouth opened to make any kind of sound, but nothing happened. I tried to move. I focused so hard on trying to simply raise my right hand off the table, but it was too heavy. The doctors had to know I was awake. If they knew, they’d stop. If they knew, it would all be over. I just needed to do something to get their attention, but they were so focused on my legs. They didn’t even glance up towards my face, not even once, to see the fear and the anguish that was mirrored in my eyes. I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from that room as possible. I wanted to get away from the dead quiet that enveloped me like a blanket that was too heavy, practically suffocating me. The moment I closed my eyes to escape the horror I was seeing, I woke up.

When I woke up from this dream, I felt like I could barely breathe. Without even giving it a second thought, I yanked back the covers to look at my legs. I touched them to make sure they were still intact, still closed up tight. I looked on my legs, my hands, and my sheets for the blood. The blood that had been so incredibly red, so out of place in that white room. With my sweaty palms resting on my knees, my emotions took over. I cried out, knowing that tears couldn’t do this type of fear justice. I rocked back and forth, holding the stuffed teddy bear that was tucked into the bed beside me, and knowing as I started to shake that the tears were coming. When my body finally allowed me to cry, I curled up on my side, hugging the stuffed teddy bear to my chest like a shield, and let my tears speak for me. After the immediate emotion passed and I was curled up into the tightest ball I could form, I began to hum. I hummed the lullaby that my dad so often sung to me when he’d rock me in his mother’s rocking chair on the nights I couldn’t sleep. Eventually, sleep tugged at me again, and I opened my eyes for a pleading moment as I looked into the darkness, knowing the dream was waiting for me.

Categories: Cerebral Palsy, Disability, Uncategorized, Writing1 Comment

Physical Therapy: Past and Present

Amelia Hall # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

I received physical therapy every week of my life until I was 16 years old. So, me and PT have quite a history. And to be honest, it isn’t all that pretty. For me, PT was focused on getting me as independent as possible and as mobile as I could possibly be. That meant learning to walk with a walker, then crutches, and eventually independently. With a physical disability, that’s no easy feat. I didn’t walk in any sense until I was 5 or 6, I think…so I was way behind my peers in that respect. However, that’s where PT came in…to provide me with the tools I needed to reach the same level of functioning as my able-bodied peers. As you can imagine, it was hard work, it was painful, and I left every therapy session having cried at least once (or at least that’s how it felt).

The trauma of physical therapy didn’t surface until I had my first surgery at the age of 11. Following my first surgery, after being in long-leg casts for 8 weeks, physical therapists were ready to get my legs moving. Try keeping your legs board-straight for 8 weeks and then being asked to bend your knees. It’s a level of pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. One of the three most vivid memories I have is one particular day in physical therapy at Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Greenville, SC, following my first surgery. The physical therapist was determined to get my knees to bend. However, up until this point I had fought her every step of the way. She ended up placing a blue-padded bench right behind my knees in the hopes that gravity would do it’s job over the course of an hour and by the end of therapy, my knees would be bent over the bench. Suffice it to say, gravity didn’t win. I held my legs in the air for 90% of my PT session that day. Eventually, the physical therapist put her hands on my knees and pushed down. Because I had held my legs up for almost an hour, down they went and out came my screams. One minute my legs were in the air, pain-free, and the next…my body went into overdrive trying to process the pain that was splitting me open from inside. I cried and screamed so loud and for so long that I remember a nurse coming in asking if everything was okay. Until that moment, I didn’t understand the concept of a blood-curdling scream…and I also didn’t understand what it meant to feel such an intense pain that when you open your mouth no sound comes out at all. Now I know better.

That PT moment occurred at the age of 11. I am now 25, and I can still go back to that moment in my mind in a matter of seconds….and when I do, the tears come, and I can’t stop. I cry for the pain I felt, the level of fear and anxiety that was coursing through me, and the fact that at the age of 25, I can so easily place myself back in that moment without even blinking. To put it bluntly, physical therapy has essentially traumatized me. It still holds a lot of power over me, I still have nightmares, and I still have really intense reactions towards PT.

A few years ago, my doctor suggested I go back to PT again. “It won’t be like last time. This time, when you say stop, they will.” See, as a child in PT, my voice didn’t matter that much. If I said stop, the pain continued. The physical therapists kept pushing. They had to in order to help me get to the point I needed to be. Therefore, a few years ago, when my doctor said it would be different, I didn’t believe him. Even when the physical therapist said, “You’re an adult. You’re in control now,” I had a very hard time believing her. After only one PT session as an adult, I started having panic attacks. Even though I was in a different place, in my mind I was an 11-year-old girl in the PT room of Shriner’s Hospital. I panicked. I couldn’t breathe, and I felt like I was dying. In short, I had a panic attack.

I have not been back to physical therapy since my previous experience as an adult caused panic attacks. However, I’ve reached a point in my life where I feel like I at least need to try going back. I am utterly terrified and just the thought of it makes my heart race and my breath become rapid. How I’m going to go through with it, I seriously don’t know. But I have to try. I owe myself that much. And I just hope the physical therapist doesn’t negatively respond to my panic attack. I can’t have that happening again.

Send good thoughts over the next few weeks. I need them.

Categories: Cerebral Palsy, Disability, Uncategorized, Writing11 Comments

Learning to Drive With a Disability

Amelia Hall # # # # # # # # #

As I was entering my teenage years, my parents and I were unsure whether I’d be able to drive a car. However, as with most things in my life, I knew I wanted to drive a car, and I was going to do anything I possibly could to make that happen.

While I didn’t drive a car until I obtained my permit, I was driving as early as 5 years old. I used to drive my Barbie Jeep around and around my neighborhood for hours on end. I’d turn on the little Barbie radio in the Jeep and “floor it,” flying down the sidewalk in my hot pink Barbie Jeep. As I got older, my Barbie Jeep transitioned to a go-cart and eventually a four-wheeler, but the go-carts we had were always my favorite. I know I likely drove way too fast, but I remember my neighborhood used to say that they always knew when I had my go-cart out because they’d hear my laughter and screams all the way down the block. Therefore, when I eventually got behind the wheel of a car, I had years of driving practice already. It’d be a piece of cake, right? Not quite.

I have spastic diplegia cerebral palsy, meaning my CP primarily impacts my legs and causes them to be incredibly stiff. Due to the stiffness of my legs and because I knew that my legs had a tendency to involuntarily shake if my foot was placed in a particular position (called clonus), I was pretty nervous about learning to drive a car. I didn’t know if I’d be able to move my foot from the gas to the brake quickly or easily enough. I also didn’t know whether my legs would become tired quicker due to having to be flexed when using the gas pedal and brake pedal. I had been told by my physical therapist at the time that there was always the option to utilize hand controls to control the gas and the brake as opposed to using my legs. However, I also knew that I wanted to do my best to drive just like everyone else.

A benefit I had when learning to drive was the fact that I lived in a small town. Because of that, I practiced driving on dirt roads, empty back roads that hardly had any traffic, and through town where the speed limit was only 25 miles per hour. Typical kids learning to drive might have been frustrated by this, but I was not. I wanted to become as comfortable driving on country back roads as I could. In order to test my response time, we’d be driving around and my mom would say “deer” (proof that we lived in the south), and I’d pretend I saw a deer in order to practice slamming on the brakes. We learned pretty quickly that I had no problem moving my right foot back and forth between the brake and the gas (which was a major relief on my part because I didn’t want to have to utilize hand controls).

The most important thing for me when learning to drive was taking it slow. Initially, due to my own fears, I drove really, really, really slow, but that changed as I became more comfortable. Once I got my permit, took driver’s ed, and accrued a certain number of driving hours, I was ready to take the driving aspect of the test to obtain my license. And despite all the practice I had, I was completely terrified.

When I took the driving test with a woman from the DMV in the passenger’s seat, initially everything was fine. However, within a few minutes my legs started shaking so badly that it was difficult to keep my foot steadily on the gas. The DMV woman noticed the shaking and said, “Why are you shaking like that?” I responded, “I shake when I’m nervous,” not wanting to bring up my disability for fear of her using that against me when determining if I passed or failed the test. Upon hearing my response, she asked me to pull over so I could “compose myself,” though I knew that no amount of sitting still would prevent my legs from shaking. Eventually, the shaking lessened to the point where I got back on the road and completed the test. Once we returned to the DMV, the woman’s response wasn’t what I was expecting. She said, “You almost didn’t pass,” as opposed to, “Congratulations.” Looking back on it now, I still feel like she was just overall skeptical about my ability to drive a car.

Because of my disability, learning to drive wasn’t just about getting my license and having a car to drive. It was so much more than that. It meant independence. It meant feeling included as a functional member of society. But more than anything, it opened so many doors in my future. There have been a few instances where people have been surprised to learn I am able to drive on my own, and I know in the disability world it is no easy feat. But I also know that if I had been unable to drive, I would have found some other way to take on an active role in my world. After all, my life has always been one of adaptation, but it has never been one of defeat.

 

Categories: Cerebral Palsy, Disability, Writing2 Comments

I’m back!

Amelia Hall

After months of trying to remember my log in information for this blog, I’m finally back. Truly, it feels incredible. So much has happened since I have been on this blog, and yet even typing in this semi-constrained white box is the most free I have felt in a long time. Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I sat down to write for myself. Ever since August, my life has been full to the brim with graduate school, an internship, and some form of a life. Though I’ve loved it, it’s been busy, and within the chaos, I’ve somehow drifted away from writing…away from that part of myself that aches to breathe through words…away from the part of myself that I typically keep hidden from the word, unless I’m within the blogosphere (crazy enough).

Well, friends, I’m back…for the long haul. When I first started graduate school back in August, I was so overwhelmed that I thought I had to choose between writing and the growth of my future career as a mental health therapist/social worker. However, by not giving myself writing time over the past six months, I’ve felt more distant from my own life than ever before. So maybe it’s not about choosing one passion over another. Maybe it’s about making room in my life for both passions.

Therefore, this is my attempt to do that. Whether it’ll mean blogging once a week or twice a week, I’m not sure. But, I’m here, and at this point, that’s all that matters. I’m not entirely sure where this blog will go from here, though I do suspect I’ll continue with some Cerebral Palsy posts. After all, it goes along with this blog’s name. Despite the amount of posts I’ve already written about what it’s like to live with Cerebral Palsy, there are always more. Though they’ve lessened over time, there’s still so much to talk about…so many memories I haven’t even attempted to revisit yet. However, due to taking the writing break, I think I’m more prepared to tackle the harder memories now than ever before. So, here’s to future writing, and most of all, here’s to all of you: all the lovely bloggers I’ve connected with over the past 4 years. If you’ve stuck with me from the beginning, I fully appreciate you beyond words. If not…if you’re new to my blog…you’ve come at just the right time.

Categories: Cerebral Palsy, Writing8 Comments

On The Right Road

Amelia Hall # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

This past Saturday, I graduated from college with a Bachelors in Psychology. As I sat in the third row among my classmates, barely viewable among a sea of blue, I was happy. I wasn’t the girl a few seats over who kept having to wipe away her tears. I wasn’t the guy one row in front of me who looked bored, as if he’d rather be any other place than seated among his classmates. I was the girl in the third row whose gaze kept moving back and forth between the keynote speaker and section 4 of the arena where my friends and family were sitting. I was the girl who was soaking up every moment.

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Author and higher education expert, Arthur Levine, was the keynote speaker at my graduation ceremony. At first, when he began discussing the current state of our economy and the degree of technological change within our society, I became bored. These were things I had heard countless times, especially within the bubble of a liberal arts university. However, what he said later made me perk up my ears.

“We need your help as part of the most diverse generation in U.S. history – we need your help to knit together a deeply divided nation,” said Levine. “We need your help in dreaming, designing and developing a new world tied together by technology. … We need your abilities and imaginations to create the first global society in history. … Tomorrow’s going to require leaders who want to help heal a pained nation and a troubled world – you can make a difference. … Making a difference is your birthright.” (courtesy of the UNC Asheville website)

Specifically, the last part of this passage touched me, most importantly the idea of helping to heal and make a difference. In many ways, since I have chosen to pursue my master’s degree in social work beginning in August, I felt as if Arthur Levine was speaking only to me. There were moments in which it felt like he was looking right at me. It was as if he was simply reassuring me that I am moving into the right field, while also moving into a profession that I have a true passion for. Receiving this kind of reassurance, which I assume was not his intention, was one of the greatest graduation gifts I could hope to have been given. It was as if the universe was saying, Yep, you’re doing exactly what you need to be doing, so keep going.

Therefore, rather than processing out of my graduation ceremony with a sense of worry and dread, I held my head high. I smiled because for the first time in my life, I truly felt like I was on the right road to start doing what I’m meant to do. What I also realized was that I’ve been doing just that for the past few years. I have been following my passion of helping others ever since I decided to open up about my experiences with Cerebral Palsy in January of 2012, and that passion has only increased since I have started speaking to elementary and middle schools on the topic of bullying as it relates to my CP experiences. So, though I haven’t started my master’s program yet, I do feel like I have been on the right road for a while now. Truthfully, I think I knew that the first time someone contacted me after reading a blog post of mine to tell me how opening up about my experiences has helped them to better understand what their son, their daughter, or they themselves are going through.

As I continue to enjoy my summer, and specifically focus more strongly on writing my memoir, I’ll push myself forward by knowing that I am helping others. Even if it’s just one person, I am helping that person to become more aware of disabilities. I am helping them to see the one thing that I myself still struggle to see sometimes: Different is beautiful.

Categories: Disability, Education, Writing6 Comments