Dystopia

Imagine that you were living on the International Space Station for several years. Your time away causes you to long for your family, friends and life back on Earth, but you pour all your energy into your scientific experiments and on keeping the station running.  When your time is finally over on the ISS, you are ready, excited to return to the way your life used to be. Now also imagine that while you were away you forgot completely about gravity? You come out of the landing ship unable to walk, can't find the muscles that you know you used to have and can't do the things that you used to do - even though your home has not changed. The children you love are still smiling from the other side of the table, the kitchen still in a comforting state of disarray and your loving husband still warm in bed beside you. But this thing called gravity it is preventing you from doing all those things you used to be able to do.

So this is why my weekend home, by utopia, has turned into dystopia. I have been living on the ISS, pouring all my efforts into therapy and healing, where laundry is done, food is delivered on a tray and there are at least eight different (highly trained) people continuously available to assist me at any given moment. So when I returned home, to the place where I (usually) enjoyed doing all of those daily living activities like cooking, cleaning, laundry, playing, and can not do them, I start to give in. All my work on the ISS, what was the point? I wonder how I will ever be able to overcome this (gravity) and participate in life again? My wonderful children seem to understand and are helpful as much as they can be, and my most patient and caring (untrained, but quick study) husband goes above and beyond to help. But when all I want to do is get up off my chair and walk over to the couch to be beside the warm wood stove, and can't, the reality of my situation sinks in evermore. In my life before going to the ISS I used to be able to get up and move to wherever I wanted to. Now I can't.

I can't get up stairs to say goodnight to my kids in their beds, I can't reach the kitchen sink, dishes or oven controls. In fact if I am in the kitchen anyone else who dares to join me does so at the risk of losing their toes. I can reach the microwave, but can't hold a bowl of oatmeal or a cup of coffee and roll my chair at the same time. In fact the slope of my legs makes it impossible to carry anything without the risk of it landing on the floor.  I can get into the bathroom, but can't reach the light. I can get into the office, but the carpeting makes for a difficult turning radius. Ella and I attempted to get out to the garden only to get caught in a hole in the lawn that even Theo had to turn my chair around in order to extract my tires.

I have had an extraordinary amount of pain in my back this weekend. I am unsure if it is the result of the long drive home Friday or the softness of the mattress we are sleeping on. I have taken more pain pills then usual and even lay on the floor on a sheepskin in front of the fire to try to ease this discomfort. That of course presented the problem of gravity again - requiring the brute strength of Theo to get me back up and into my wheelchair.

Ella and I are going to make butternut squash soup for lunch today, something that I would have done with voluntary assistance in the past, now I will be doing it with supervision. Maybe I'll be helping by chopping onions at the kitchen table, or pealing some apples and pears. I know that we will adjust, and make some changes to the house to make things a little more manageable. In the mean time my frustration level, sadness and longing for how things used to be is unbearably overwhelming.