Exactly as Carroll predicted, the unexpected loss of mobility changed my life a lot.
How Loss of Mobility Changed my Life
Waking up in the morning, and facing the reality that I cannot happily go to work, I told Wendy: if you really want a vacation, go to a hospital and put gypsum around your foot (eventhough nothing happens to it), and you get the peace you are longing for for many years.
The loss of mobility is a great thing. It does not make a lot of things impossible, it just made it inconvinient. Getting a cup of water? Easy! But you have to stand up slowly with the support of the chair and jump there, or you need to call Wendy to help. That type of inconvinience highly reduced what I want to do, and left enough time for me to watch the scene outside my window, and peaceful thought flows.
Happiness
In the book Stumble Upon Happiness, scientiest Daniel Gilbert found out that people who are blind, or cannot speak, or lose a leg are not neccessarily unhappier than normal people. We thought that to be able to walk is so important to our happiness, but actually, it is not.
Disabled people also enjoy the peace of mind, and thinking, and like myself today, blogging.
This morning, I started to really think aboug the matter of the reality that I have to sit down quietly for 4 weeks. Well. Need some basic planning.
Jian Shuo, I don’t know if you have access to anything like this in China, or even if the link will work for you there, but one thing that absolutely saved my sanity when my ankle was broken was being able to use a device called a “rollabout”. The link to the company that sells and rents them in the US is here: http://www.roll-a-bout.com/ If you cannot see it, the basic idea is that it provides a rolling platform t approximately knee level, on which you kneel with your affected leg so that it completely supports the injured area. With your other foot you can push along as though you were riding a scooter, and there is a handle in front so that you can steer. I used it all over the house (our house is almost entirely flat with tile floors so it was very easy) but I also used it out in the world to do grocery shopping, etc. It is very much easier than a wheelchair, and much much more flexible and comfortable than using crutches. In a very short time (just a matter of less than an hour when I first used it) I got very proficient and found that it was lots of fun to turn corners fast doing sort of a “wheelie”. Yifan would love to watch you doing that! It might be that your living area is too small or has too many changes of level for you to use it effectively at home, but I would bet it would be very very helpful to you at your office and on the sidewalk going in and out of buildings. I’m sure it would be way too expensive for me to send you the one I still have, but maybe there is something similar that is “made in China”!
Good luck getting used to your new circumstances. I’m sure we will be hearing more from you about the philosophy of unexpected disability :-)
I saw that picture – it is really nice! However, I don’t try to get one since it can be complicated. I have a nice IKEA rolling chair that I can sit down it and move around. Wendy gets it several days before I broke my foot, and I joked that it is like she knows what is going to happen. :-)
JS… errr… how about getting a Segway. hehehe… then you can move around easily.