Being Real

That fall I wrote about on March 19th, here?  I was wrong about it.  And, indeed, the consequences and meaning of that fall.  I should really have a label dedicated to falling, because this fall might actually be as much a fall from my life as dancer as it is an account of hitting the road on a dismal city street.

Living this injury has been complicated.  When I am hiding from those around me and from myself, I think of it, talk about it as "I fell, smashed my wrist and have a compression injury."  Sometimes, I say, "I tore some muscles in my forearm; I have an extension injury."  But what I should say is this:

During rehearsal, I hyperextended my left elbow.  It didn't dislocate, but it did get partially out of position and all the ligaments are inflamed/overstrained.  I also tore two of my forearm extensors; I put my first rib out of position; and I yanked my neck.  Then, on the way to the car, I fell out of my wheelchair.  I put my left arm down at the wrong angle.  I tore the ligaments and cartilage in my hand and wrist.  My 4th and 5th fingers are particularly affected.  Further, during the imaging tests, they discovered that I also have tendinosis (a degenerative tendon condition -- where the tendon fails to heal).

There.  I have a chronic condition and two interacting and conflicting acute local injuries; all of the former interact with and are complicated by my disability.  The lived of experience of all of this has been complicated.  There's is and has been a fair amount of pain that has been difficult to control.  More important, it hasn't been easy to find out what to do about any of it.

What are my options?  I've been through some drama: A phone call from my doctor telling me, mid-rehearsal, to stop dancing right now in case my tendon ruptures.  And a followup two days later saying, well, it's probably OK.  And a third call saying that, well, no one really knows.  I've had one doctor recommend surgeries for the tendon and for my wrist; and another flatly rule out surgery.  I've had one say, well, I can't help you.  Don't do anything that hurts -- just go ahead and live.  In other words, no one knows what to do.

I've decided to settle on PT; I'm trying to rest, strengthen and recover.  But even this hasn't been a simple strategy.  The conflicting injuries and disability stuff have been a challenge. "Oh, cool!  Double crush!" was my PT's reaction.  But she doesn't have to live with "double crush" on a daily basis.  And frankly, she hasn't been able to come up with a plan that enables me to wheel, continue some kind of life, rehab all the bits and pieces.

I'm surprised by all of this.  The cynic in me pretends to be unruffled that the medical system is failing me at what I consider to be an important moment in my life.  But the person in me is surprised by my reaction to all of this.

I have spent years building a body that "should" not be able to do what it can do, given what is known of my disability stuff.  I trained my body every day -- in different ways.  I took dance classes; I prepared.  The me that went out on the stage was a carefully constructed, carefully managed physical presence.  I have worked to be here.  Harder than anything I have ever done in my life before.  And now?  Well, now?  No one can tell me what any of this means.  Should I be worried about the tendinosis?  If one arm is so bad, what does that say about the other arm?  Is my right arm OK?  How do you know? Are there reliable ways to produce healing?  Do I just dance on until I can't?  Should I pull out now?

I'm also surprised by a new awareness of how much I relied on my body.  I now have an even keener sense of how much I loved what my body could do; I am more aware of how much I delighted in its power, grace and impossibility.  I know that I mistakenly operated on the assumption that training, growth, progression meant control, but I thought that this was permanent.  I felt that dancing was a constant. I knew that I could do the extraordinary on a quotidian basis, so I kept doing it until I knew no other daily practice.  I saw myself as a confident series of muscles, bones, metal and wheels.  I imagined myself purely as a wholly physical being who knew that the cells of her could float through it all because I knew that if they couldn't float, they could power on.  I had my body; I was strong.

If I had read that last paragraph on the internet, I know that I would be right in there, wondering about what the writer thought about strength as a virtue constructed by the medical world.  I would be asking questions about the value of extreme physicality and the writer's pride in her prowess.  Did that pride have the tiniest scent of ableism in it?

I've thought about it a lot, actually; it was one of the reasons I wrote the BADD 2011 post that I did.  Am I *that* person?  I don't think I am, but I am also the first to admit that the unconscious does weird things to us, so the best I can say is that I don't think I am that person.  I don't think that I ever attempted to "overcome" or "compensate" for my disability.  I worked to be in my disability as wholly as possible and to extend my disabled body as a disabled body so that it could be as free and full as possible without trying to repair or cure it.

Still, the transition to my current state has been surprising.  I hear in the back of my head, my mother's voice, warning me that "pride comes before a fall."  Is she right?  Even if I don't accept or recognize for myself the overly Biblical sinner's language here, have I been too proud?  And is that pride making it difficult for me to adjust to the new normal?

Whatever the cause, I wonder on a daily basis if I will be able to return to dancing.  I feel sad; so sad.  The company keeps going, and I am missing out on all the fun, fireworks, and artistry.  I love dancing, and I'm at home without a clear end date or, I should say, restart date.  I'm grieving.  And I am frustrated by the uncertainty of it all.  When will the pain stop; is the PT working; will I be able to dance soon?  When can I go about my life?

The linguist in me appreciates the way in which my life seems to be shaped by various understandings of the word "to fall."  I fell into my life as a dancer; it was quite by chance that I was at a conference where I was exposed to disabled dancers; it was by chance that I was in the geographical region that had places for disabled dances to take class.  I now seem to have fallen out, albeit temporarily, of my life as a dancer.  I want to say something like "easy come, easy go;" I fell in; I worked hard, but did I deserve to be here?

But the reality of my current existence bites a little deeper.  I worked hard to be here; I want to return, but  I don't want to stage a comeback.

I will have to start with the idea that my body is beyond my control.