1. Being on crutches is better than the alternative.
The way I see it, the alternatives are being a wheelchair (infinitely more inconvenient), or lying in bed until my cartilage heals. While I have never been in a wheelchair, just trying to push a stroller around town gives me teeny tiny taste of how difficult it must be to use a wheelchair user in our society. (Plus, I've been reading about it here: http://thatcrazycrippledchick.blogspot.com/.) As for lying in bed, it might sound appealing, but I was on bed rest for four months when I was pregnant, and the appeal wears off after about, oh, 24 hours.
2. There are certain things you can't do on crutches. Enjoy not doing them.
Yes, being on crutches makes things that were once very easy not easy at all. For example, at physical therapy one day, one of the aides commented on my shoes (which, to be fair, really didn't go with what I was wearing). I told her that as I was leaving the house, I realized that the slip-on shoes that I had been wearing ever since the surgery were in a different room, and I didn't have the energy to go back to that room before leaving the house. So instead, I ended up wearing clogs with shorts. LOL.
On the flip side, you can make this into a good thing. It's no secret that one very difficult task to do on crutches is carry certain things, such as food and beverages (other things can be toted around in a backpack). This makes it pretty impossible to help set the table and carry things to and from the kitchen. I hate doing this anyway, don't you? Enjoy having an excuse not to help. If you are tempted to feel guilty, just think about how much you normally do when you aren't on crutches. It's probably a lot. So bury the guilt, get your eight-year-old to carry your glass of the wine to the table for you first thing, then enjoy sitting there while everyone else does the rest of the work.
3. There are certain things you have to do despite being on crutches. You'll figure out how to do them. Crutches inspire creativity in certain instances.
4. Being on crutches gives your arms a kick-ass work out.
5. Crutches provide a topic for conversation.
Now, I know this is a touchy subject for people who are permanent crutch users - or so my Internet 'research' tells me. Of course, as a person permanently on crutches, you don't want to talk about your crutches, you just want to talk about the same things everyone else talks about with random strangers. The thing is that in the absence of crutches, there isn't usually any conversation at all between people who don't know each other. As someone who never talks to random people, or even non-random people, I haven't minded the curiosity that my crutches seem to inspire. In a non-crutch state, I rarely talk to anyone - not by choice, but because I'm not that outgoing and apparently don't have a friendly face that invites even outgoing people to want to make conversation with me. However, my crutches seem to have sparked a few conversations that I know wouldn't have happened otherwise, a few of which were with people who knew people who had the same surgery as I did, and they were all very positive. And even if they hadn't been positive, I don't think I would have regretted the conversations themselves.
6. Crutches bring things out into the open.
This is sort of related to the point above, but I decided it was different enough to merit its own number. I've mentioned in previous entries that for a large part of the past year, I was limping around in pain, which was embarrassing for me. And believe you me, I tried not to limp, but for the past 4-5 months, it was pretty much unavoidable. I think it was eventually sort of obvious to some people that something was wrong with me, but no one really wanted to ask me, 'Are you limping? Do you have pain? What's wrong with you?' (Only my mom dared to enter into this territory.) At the same time, it's also weird for me to have to be like, 'In case you noticed that I've been limping around, you should know that I've had hip issues for a long time and my hip is reeeeaaaaallly hurting me right now.' So instead you say nothing, and everyone wonders. And it's awkward.
However, you can't ignore crutches. It provides a natural segue into a conversation that probably should have happened a long time ago. Looking back, I really wish I had been able to share with those around me just how miserable I was this past year. Regardless, I'm glad they know now.
7. People are generally nice to you when you're on crutches.
They open doors for you. They pick things up for you. They offer to give you their seats, sometimes (or not - I love this blog: http://www.peoplewhositinthedisabilityseatswhenimstandingonmycrutches.com/). So maybe it's because they feel sorry for you, and some people don't want pity, but whatever. Who can complain about people being nice to you? And granted, if you aren't on crutches, you don't need people to open doors for you or pick things up for you or give you their seats, but still. Again, who can complain about people being nice to you? If nothing else, maybe it's a good reminder that humans aren't jerkwads all the time.
On a more personal note, I've mentioned that my kids attend the university daycare/summer camp. I would say that at any give time, over half of the student workers there are either current or former students of mine. Inevitably, I also usually have a student who has a kid in my kid's classroom. This can lead to some tricky situations. Needless to say, this doesn't exactly make me feel awesome about dropping my kids off at daycare on crutches. And it's not just the crutches, it's the awkwardness. It's the difficulty of trying to punch in our entry code, then open the stupid, F-ing heavy doors and keep them open long enough to get inside, of trying to bend over to sign my kids in and get all their stuff into and out of their cubbies. I am clunky and awkward, which doesn't fit with my teaching persona, where I am confident and self-assured and graceful, and every second of all my lectures is completely choreographed.
But you know what? Even my worst students who hate me the most can be nice to a woman on crutches. If nothing else, maybe it has helped them to see me as a real person and not the Evil Teacher Who Ruined Their GPA. My mother-in-law, who taught elementary school for years, used to find it amusing when she ran into her students at the grocery store. She said they acted shocked to see her there, and she would always tell them, 'Yes, teachers have to eat, too.' And occasionally, teachers have to have surgery. It's good for students to know.
8. Being on crutches can make you nicer.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm snarky a lot of the time. I hesitate to say that being on crutches for four weeks has actually made me a nicer person - that remains to be seen, lol - but it has, at the very least, made me think about a lot of things. And I mean a lot.
I wrote a few paragraphs about some of the things I've been thinking about for the past few weeks but then decided I'd like to end this entry here. I hope to expand on some of these things in future entries. In the meantime, I will just tell my crutches thank you for helping me for the past month. No offense, but I hope that after this week, we won't be seeing each other again. :)
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