lifebeyond4limbs.com

In coming to terms with accepting and living with my disability I have said to my therapist many times, “I just want the normal problems in life.” Facing the decision of whether or not to amputate a leg definitely doesn’t fall into the ‘normal life problems’ category.

Five surgeries ago I made a decision that most people would have found difficult to make and many would have not taken my path. I chose to give up the range of motion in my ankle by having the tibia/talus ankle joint fused. The dome of my talus was destroyed, therefore my ankle joint was compromised and there were no permanent fixes for the problem. We were coming into a time where orthopedic medicine was starting to consider ankle fusion a dirty word, yet was unable to give any kind of viable solution that would avoid going down a path of many surgeries. Yes, the solutions might preserve my range of motion for a short time, but with the level of walking and standing my career involved I was told I would have little relief in pain. I was also definitively told by all surgeons that it would eventually have to be fused no matter what immediate route I chose. So, to save my career and avoid going down a path of multiple surgeries with long recoveries, I made the choice to forever change the anatomy of my lower leg and fuse my ankle. In the end the orthopedic doctors all agreed with what all my research and the many testimonials from those who fused their ankles said: fusing the ankle was the permanent solution to ensure pain-free walking. Unfortunately, my choice didn’t have me avoid the very path I was trying to avoid, including losing my career. Now, after six surgeries and having both of the two joints that make up the ankle fused, the last thing I want to do is continue trying surgeries. Just as I took the choice of fusing the ankle as a permanent solution, I now strongly feel it is time to make the next permanent solution amputation.

Amputation is a powerful and scary word. It is a decision most could never imagine making and one you would do anything to avoid. It is a decision that has drastic ramifications and there is no turning back. When I tell someone I want to have my lower leg amputated I get one of three reactions: they are horrified, they don’t take me seriously, or they respond in a matter-of-fact way that makes me think they didn’t comprehend what I said. Their reaction comes from the natural fear we have of losing a part of our body, especially a leg. Their reaction comes from not being able to understand what it is like to live with chronic pain. And the reaction comes due to living in a world where modern medicine can fix everything – pop a pill, get a joint replacement, have an organ transplant or fix it with surgery and problem solved. Over the winter I befriended a guy who works in my building who had broken his leg. He was given temporary parking in the garage where I park while he recovered, so we became “crutch buddies” while crutching into the building each morning. At the end of his need for using crutches he asked if there was any hope for fixing my leg. When I responded that I was strongly considering amputation, he said, “I could never do that, I am pretty attached to my leg.” My response was, “That is because you have no need to, you have experienced healing.”

I have not experienced the miracles of today’s medical science. Instead, what started as a small fracture has resulted in a long string of complications that led to six painful surgeries, six long recoveries, ten leg casts, chronic pain and six years of using crutches. With each surgery I forged ahead to the next, hoping for relief of pain, hoping just to be able to walk comfortably and be able to shed the crutches. To walk was all I wanted – I had given up on returning to my active life. I just wanted to be relieved from the pain. Yet instead of getting relief, the pain became worse after the last two surgeries. I now carry this painful appendage around with me like extra baggage. Therefore it is no longer the crutches I am looking to discard – it’s the painful appendage.

Two years ago I traded hope and waiting for action and living. I made the choice to stop seeking out doctors and surgeries to fix the problem. It seemed pretty clear the problem wasn’t fixable and the doctors really weren’t giving me any viable solutions. Yes, there were things they suggested and wanted to try, but they were all stabs in the dark solutions that simply prolonged the waiting game. I wanted the game to end, so decided I had to make the best of what I still had and try to live with my circumstance. Even then I knew the clear solution was amputation and if my surgeon could switch hats from the surgeon who took an oath to restore his patient’s skeletomuscular system to just a doctor, he would agree that amputation was the best solution. However, I was not ready to make the decision. I was not strong enough mentally or emotionally to go through any additional surgery and certainly not an amputation. I also felt I desperately needed to find my way back into life. I needed a job to help support my family, I needed to find ways to spend quality time with my family and I needed to get to a place where I felt good about myself. Deep down there was also a part of me that was holding out for the miracle cure. I no longer felt like a productive human being and my age was quickly becoming a factor. I felt like I had already lost four years of my life and I needed to take my life back and learn to live with my disability.

So I gave up on my messed up leg, grabbed a pair of sidestix (forearm crutches) and threw myself back into life. I set three goals for myself:

1. Retrain myself for a new career.
2. Discover adaptive ways to enjoy life and active hobbies.
3. Find ways to make a difference.

Two years later I have managed to live rather well on a pair of crutches. I am proud to have accomplished all three goals. I recently received an outstanding one year review at my new job. I have found plenty of ways to be active including biking, swimming, skiing, snowshoeing and working out. I have taken my experiences, battles, and successes to help others going through similar circumstances by telling my story on my website/blog. My need to make a difference is being fulfilled, as I receive weekly messages from people all over the world, thanking me for helping them by sharing my story and tips. So to the average eye, I look like I am doing fine and considering everything, I am doing well. But it might be better!

What people don’t see is the relentless pain I live with each day. My lower left leg and foot

This tee- shirt from Zazzle sums my situation well!

are engulfed in some level of pain or discomfort every waking minute of the day. I go to sleep to a throbbing heartbeat in my ankle. I awake several times during the night to deep bone aching that becomes mind numbing. I have even experienced pain in my dreams, having sleep not even provide relief. It has become normal to spend several hours lying awake in incredible pain during the night and I no longer know what it is like to be comfortable in bed. Most days I dread dropping my left leg off the bed and avoid any manipulation or use of it for as long as I can. I spend my days trying to figure out what to do with my painful useless appendage. It has become exhausting to lift and hold my foot off the ground, and there are days where I am unable to tolerate holding my leg up that makes ambulation difficult, not the crutches. Here and there I attempt to do something that requires setting the crutches aside for a short time and pay a very high price. The pain later is the equivalent of post-surgical pain and the 4 hours elapsed without taking the next dose of pain medication. To put it simply, for me, the act of walking and standing means extreme pain. My crutches have become my salvation, my way of ambulation, and my only source of relief. Therefore, I’m spending most of my days wishing my leg was gone and that I could just get around on my crutches without the leg in my way.

Really hoping this isn’t my surgeon!

Despite the pain, willingly being knocked out and letting a doctor cut off your lower leg, and waking up minus a foot and ankle, is absolutely terrifying. I can’t yet even begin to imagine the fear I will face the hours and minutes before being knocked out for surgery. The fact is that I know being freed of this painful leg will give me a better quality of life and I am ready to face amputation with a positive attitude and with no regrets. As my surgeon warns, there are no guarantees – my entire leg has damage from the six years of lack of use, and my knee spends too much time bent to keep my foot off the ground or contracted due to pain. This is putting me at a higher risk of knee contracture and chronic pain can play unexplainable mind games. All this could make using a prosthetic difficult or not doable. My doctor says that “our goal is hopefully to have you walking comfortably with a prosthetic,” and yes, that will be an amazing goal to achieve. My immediate goal however is to not have pain – anything else will be an incredible gift – as not having the excruciating leg to deal with will mean a better quality of life. It is time to relieve myself from this pain and begin yet another new chapter of my life. I face amputation with the knowledge that I have already proven I am strong. I’ve proven I can still achieve and be a productive person despite disability. The recovery will set me back a bit, however I refuse to let life end with amputation. I will quickly hop back up onto my crutches and keep “moving right along”.

So on September 24, 2014, I will bid my painful left leg farewell as it will be amputated just below the knee. My one month countdown has officially begun. Like my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/livinglifeoncrutchescom/479968625434021?ref=hl to follow my countdown and recovery! I will share my thoughts as I experience the last days of having two legs, how I will prepare for amputation and my progress post amputation.

I am very grateful that I have been given the strength to overcome my adversities. Please know that I share my story to help others struggling with similar circumstances. My story can only help those it reaches, so please share this post in any way you can.

Thank you for reading! Please subscribe to never miss a post or come back in two weeks for my next post, “How Humor Makes Life Less Stressful”.

Becoming a disabled parent means that your disability becomes a family affair. It is not only you the disability affects – it impacts your spouse and children as well. In a sense your disability becomes your family’s disability.

While discussing with my wife what I felt I have accomplished since being disabled, she said, “None of it had to do with your leg, it is who you are, and you would have done those things anyway”. Interesting, over the next few days while I pondered over thinking that maybe I haven’t really accomplished anything, I realized I had accomplished more than I thought. While we don’t want our disability to define us, in reality it does. It defines us because it is what we work around every day, it is why we have to make changes in how/what we do and for me why I require crutches. That doesn’t mean the disability has to become who we are. Maybe my accomplishment was in not letting my disability change the person I was. So yes, my leg defines me physically. Yet what it doesn’t define is who I am. I am not my disability. I am not the crutches. I am still the person I was before the disability. It doesn’t define who am because I don’t let it, but it certainly affects my life.

It wasn’t that I didn’t ever consider how my disability impacted my wife and kids. In fact, my family is the reason I didn’t throw in the towel, there’re the reason I remained as independent as I could, there’re the reason I force myself on to the crutches, and they are the reason I forced myself back into life. What I realized during that same conversation with my wife was that while I concentrated on pushing myself and not letting my disability stop me, I neglected the losses my wife endured. I thought that if I pushed myself physically, proved my complete independence, she would reap the rewards as well. What I was missing was how my disability had also changed my wife’s life. While I have been pushing myself physically to achieve great independence, I had not considered my wife’s losses and how my disability affected her emotionally. The way I need to handle my physical losses is inflicting me with more physical pain and causing me to not be emotionally there for her. My need to constantly be pushing myself physically in the end is causing me greater physical pain and my wife greater emotional pain.

The Challenge Disability Puts on a Marriage!

When learning to live with disability you need to learn what you can do for yourself, your spouse/partner also needs to learn what you can do for yourself, and you both need to learn what you can do for each other. The disability creates a learning curve in the partnership. Household duties might have to be redistributed and how you care for and support each other might have to change. Disability doesn’t excuse either partner from doing what is reasonably expected of them though – it is still a partnership and both members still need to do their part to make it work. That’s the challenge! It is so important to communicate and brainstorm ways you can support and help your partner despite your disability. It still isn’t all about you! So maybe I need to “check my ego at the door”. Maybe I can do more for my wife by accepting that there are things I can no longer do. This won’t be easy for me as it goes against my nature. But is there a happy medium? Can I prioritize my physical activity and have less pain so I can be more emotionally available for my wife?

Ways your disability affects your spouse/partner.

Emotionally– While we are dealing with pain, surgeries, loss and emotional trauma, our spouses are also overcome with their emotions of loss and sadness. They are often suppressing their emotions to protect us. Our spouse/partner now feels like they need to be the emotionally strong one in the marriage.

Physically– There is often a reversal in household chores. While you are coming to terms with what you can no longer do, your spouse/partner is coming to terms with not only doing, but learning many household jobs they never did. The once equally-shared responsibilities become lopsided.

Change in family activities– How the family spends quality time together changes. Not only does your disability affect your activities, it affects your spouse’s/partner’s activities as well. They now always have to consider your needs and whether you can join in the activity. If they continue activities you are no longer able to do they wind up feeling guilty. Many of the things my wife and I did together are lost, not only for me but for my wife as well.

Mental Stress– Constant worrying about you. Tormented by seeing you in pain. Feeling guilt about the pain you’re in. Feeling like they are not doing enough to help you. Unsure what they can reasonably ask you to do for them. Feeling guilty about asking you to do something that needs to get done. Feeling angry when seeing you do something you want done that they never would have asked you to do. My constant preoccupation is my pain, while my wife’s is feeling like she needs to be looking out for me.

Caretaker– Their role shifts from being a partner to a caretaker. No matter how independent I am, there will always be some very basic needs I have that someone without a disability doesn’t have. An example is feeling the need to be a caretaker: A family friend suffers from a chronic illness that requires him to maintain a strict eating schedule. His wife made a point to ask us the details of our daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. Her inquiry was due to his strict daily meal requirements and she needed to make sure she wouldn’t need to bring along a snack for him. She said “he would never ask” (ego in action).
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Dealing with our egos– Our spouses/partners are constantly battling our egos. We don’t accept help graciously, we don’t ask for help, we refuse help we could use and sometimes our frustrations cause us to just be a big pain in the butt.

Life change– Just as disability changes our lives forever, it changes your spouse’s/partner’s life forever. The very same day that I knew my life would be forever changed, was the very same date that my wife said changed her life. For me I knew I would never physically be the same, while she took on the role of being the emotionally stable one in the marriage.

Marriage is a partnership. It takes a lot of work to follow the “to have and behold from this day on, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; until death do us part.” Add in a disability and every aspect of the marriage may be impacted. It takes a special person to stick around. It is a fact that a large percentage of marriages end after a spouse becomes chronically ill or disabled. In my desperate plight to prove my physical abilities and independence, I neglected to see or understand how this was affecting my wife. I thought she would be happiest if I picked up where I left off before the disability and just did everything. All I was accomplishing was releasing my frustrations and anger in her presence. What I need to do is allow her to do more to help me physically, and I need to help her heal emotionally. She no longer needs to carry the emotional burden of the family alone. I believe that in reality we need to understand that our disability does impact our family and with that understanding we then need to reexamine how the partnership works.

Thank you for reading! Subscribe to never miss a post or come back in two weeks when it is time to discuss Therapeutic Amputation.

“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

While dropping my daughter off to do some volunteering at a carnival our temple was hosting, I learned a sad lesson about why children may be volunteering. Are we teaching our children that volunteering is a requirement needed to join academic organizations, or are we teaching them the true importance of volunteering and allowing them to learn what the power of giving to others has on your own life? Volunteering has played such an important part in reversing how I felt about myself in the past four years, and I felt that it would be a huge shame if our children were missing out on experiencing the real value in volunteering.

Please don’t take what I am saying the wrong way, as I am well aware of how critical it is to selflessly be charitable, however I am writing this piece to show how volunteering could help someone who may be struggling to make sense of their circumstances. It is also volunteering selflessly that has a natural reward of helping us without helping ourselves.

The Incident:

My daughter was born with a natural desire to give back and be charitable. In this case, I will admit, she was not there for selfless reasons. She was required to prove that she had a certain amount of volunteering hours to be considered for Junior Honor Society. So, volunteering for the temple carnival would have never happened if this document didn’t need the signature. Being a dad of a 12 year old girl, I walked her in to make sure she got to where she needed to be. I also decided to kill two birds with one stone, so I told her to get the document signed and I would take it with me. This way she would not need to keep track of it while she worked and I could then just pull up at the front door to pick her up as opposed to making another trip in with the document.

We were greeted by two ladies who were checking in the volunteers. Upon my daughter asking to have the document signed they very smugly stated “No, we will not sign it until you have actually completed the volunteering,” then flashed each other a look and said “if we sign it now she will leave without helping.” As they smiled proudly at us, making sure they’d made their disapproval of our request clear, I attempted to explain that I was the one who wanted the document signed first, so I could take it with me and not have to make the trip back into the building when picking her up. I gave up, realizing it wasn’t worth the argument, and I decided I didn’t want to use my crutches as an excuse. As I drove away I couldn’t help thinking how sad this interaction was.

It was sad that we live in a world that would cause these two ladies to automatically assume the worst in us. It was also sad that their reaction to signing the paper didn’t do anything to encourage future volunteering. Yet the saddest part was that my daughter needed to get this document sighed in the first place. Her reward for being charitable doesn’t require a signature. In this case volunteering for the temple carnival just wasn’t a cause she was passionate about. We both understand the value of volunteering, and neither of us deserved these ladies’ condescending attitude. So, what I found myself wondering was that maybe we are teaching our children that volunteering is all about getting the signatures for various applications.

How A Volunteering Opportunity Helped Me

I have always realized the importance of getting involved and helping out, and I’ve certainly tried to do my share. In fact, I became a teacher due to my strong desire to have a career in which I could make a difference in this world. Life happens though; I suddenly had a wife, three children and a very demanding job, and everything became pretty overwhelming without adding in volunteering my time. I tried my best to help out when needed and made plenty of monetary charitable contributions, so felt I was doing my part. Yet it wasn’t until I wound up suffering a life-changing injury, losing my career and facing depression that I truly discovered the personal payoff of volunteering

One of the lowest points of dealing with my injury was in the autumn coming up to the 2nd anniversary of having my ankle fused. At that point I had just had the 4th surgery, lost my job and was facing the two-year anniversary of forever altering the anatomy of my leg to still be in pain. I honestly didn’t know where to turn and found myself falling into complete despair. I wanted to work, but knowing I was far from done with this ordeal, I felt it wasn’t fair to myself or an employer to commit to a job. Yet I desperately needed something meaningful to do to occupy some of the time I was spending dwelling on my problems.

As luck would have it my daughter’s elementary school was in need of someone to volunteer to be president of a financially-troubled Parent Teacher Association (PTA). Being a PTA president is equivalent to having a full-time job and certainly something I had never dreamed of doing, but I seized the moment and accepted the opportunity. I was suddenly thrown into a whirlwind of issues to solve. My days quickly went from being a recluse in my home to returning into the outside world to plan family events, raise funds for educational programs and fixing the financially-struggling PTA, which was the very heart of the elementary school community.

During the next two years the PTA got me through two additional surgeries. A week or two after these surgeries I was forced to hobble out with my casted leg on crutches to lead PTA meetings. I was forced to stay in touch with the outside world; I learned new skills, met great people and did all this while giving back to my community. Once a week I crutched my way into the elementary school to read with students who needed a little extra help with their reading skills. On many of those days the effort seemed too great, the pain too severe, however once I was sitting in that school with second graders reading to me I felt wonderful. Never once, no matter what my pain level was, did I regret the effort it took for me to pull myself up on to those crutches and volunteer my time to students in need.

After two years of serving as the PTA president of the elementary school my daughter moved on to middle school. I then spent the next two years serving as vice president to the school district’s PTA Council Board. Once again, not only did this experience help me heal, grow and feel good about myself, but it also gave me the opportunity to learn valuable skills.

While enduring one of the most difficult times I had ever experienced in my life, a volunteering opportunity reversed my downward spiral toward depression. It gave me a worthwhile activity to focus on. It occupied my time, helped take my mind off my troubles, taught me new skills, kept me interacting with people and made me feel like a productive member of society. I gained all this while volunteering my time helping to make our school a better place for the children of our community. In the end I was helping to rebuild a troubled PTA, while the PTA was helping to rebuild a broken man.

Learning the value that volunteering has on our lives has nothing to do with obtaining enough volunteering hours to get into an academic club or college. What we need to teach our children is to volunteer because we are all part of this world and need to do our part in taking care of every living creature on it. We need to teach them to volunteer selflessly and experience the natural reward they will receive. We need to teach them that when your life takes a wrong turn, when you are feeling lost, or life has a void in it, volunteering has an amazing power to help you heal.

If you are struggling due to a disability, injury or unemployment, then I can’t emphasize enough how much volunteering could help you. Beyond the PTA I have searched out many other volunteering opportunities that have enriched others’ lives while giving sense to my own.

Find ways to volunteer. There are so many needs out there and many can be done from your home. Volunteering is a fantastic way to make you feel productive and good about yourself while helping others.

Thank you for reading! Please subscribe to never miss a post or come back in two weeks when I discuss the impacts of disability on the family.

Crutch tip + Business card = Fall

“There are hazards in anything one does but there are greater hazards in doing nothing.”
- Shirley Williams

Hazards are everywhere! As a full-time crutch user, I have learned to navigate my world depending on two rubber soles the size of a silver dollars at the bottom of two sticks to keep me vertical. While they do their job, they don’t supply the same security as two healthy feet. During the years I taught elementary school on crutches I slipped, slid and tripped on all kinds of things around the classroom, including the kids. So while considering job possibilities, I took into account the dangers and logistics of preforming my duties on crutches.

An office job seemed my best option. I figured I would sit safe and sound at my desk in the protection of an office. Apparently, I was wrong – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office workers are 2 to 2.5 times more likely to suffer a disabling injury from a fall than non-office workers. Here are the top reasons the CDC has pointed out:

• Tripping over office equipment, objects and electrical cords
• Bending or reaching while in an unstable chair
• Standing on a chair to reach something
• Slipping on wet floors
• Bad lighting

Many of these hazards can be avoided by being careful and keeping aware of the potential dangers. I can avoid standing and chairs, bad lighting really does pose a problem, and my office chair is pretty stable. It’s the other two hazards that become much more difficult to avoid when being dependent on a pair of crutches for walking.

So here it is: Office Crutch Hazards 101!

Before I start there are a few things to understand about crutches. They are wonderful tools that help us walk, but one missed move and there is often no turning back. This is due to the fact that we quickly come to expect crutches to be our ultimate security, our reliable set of legs if you will. They are the tools that we trust to lean on, give us balance, keep us vertical and hold our body’s weight. Crutches do all these things well until the unexpected crutch snakes strike. The snakes get us so quickly that the tools we count on for security are taken from beneath us in an instant. Crutches also require your hands to use them, therefore when the crutch snakes get you, you don’t have your hands to reach out with and grab something to catch your fall.

The following are the 5 office hazards that cause me problems way too often while at the office.

This sign means stay off to a crutch user!

Hazard # 1 Wet Floors/Slipping Hazards – Anyone who has used a pair of crutches even for a short time knows how dangerous wet floors are. Walking on a wet tile floor with crutches is the equivalent of walking on a slab of glass just after rubbing motor oil on the bottom of your shoes. As soon as the crutch tips hit that wet spot they are out from under you in a flash. Even when you are aware of the wet floors, negotiating them safely with crutches is damn near impossible.

Anything on the floor surface that slips away when a crutch tip hits it becomes hazardous. Small rugs, paper, plastic shopping bags, socks – all become a slipping hazard if a crutch tip lands on them. A crutch tip landing on a small cellophane caddy wrapper can send you to the floor before you even know it’s there. I once fell when I accidentally placed a crutch tip on a leaf on my garage floor.

Hazard # 2 Loose Carpet Edges – Think of how easy it is to catch a toe on something; we do it all the time. It is even easier to catch a crutch tip. Catching a crutch tip on a hazard, such as a loose carpet tile, will throw you off balance in an instant. When your crutch gait is tripped it is difficult to recover your step and not go down.

Hazard # 3 Objects in Tight Pathways – The width of your stance becomes wider with crutches. Therefore, narrow aisles and passages can be a challenge in themselves when walking with crutches. Add small office trash cans or other objects into the tight passages and they become tripping hazards. Stubbing a crutch on an object throws you off balance. I can’t tell you how many times I have lost my balance by catching one of my crutches on a trash can. I’ve never actually fell – it just makes a lot of noise, throws off my gait and frustrates me.

Door leaving the mens room.

Hazard # 4 Doors – I have come close to being knocked off my crutches a few times by solid doors that open in. Not that anyone wouldn’t be knocked over by one of these doors, but with crutches you can’t react as quickly as the average person when someone from the other side pushes the door open abruptly. The door in the picture is the door leaving the restroom on my floor. As you can see, there is no place to stand on either side. One day, just as I went to grab the door handle, a guy came barreling through. To this day I don’t know how I managed to save myself, but I did. The guy felt so bad that I had to stop him a few days later and talk to him about it, just so he could make eye contact with me again. Hey, these things happen – he was in a hurry and had a lot on his mind when he pushed the door open.

Hazard # 5 Evacuation Drills (Stairs) – Stairs in general are a hazard on crutches. I can ascend and descend a flight of stairs very confidently on crutches, but here and there, no matter how experienced I am, I lose my balance. I have had some frighteningly close calls. In fact, that’s the reason I avoid stairs whenever possible! I work on the 12th floor of a 41-story high rise, so evacuation drills are the real hazard. During the drills the elevators are shut down. Twelve flights of stairs packed with hundreds of people quickly descending the twenty nine floors above is not a safe place for a guy on crutches. Obviously there is a plan for those needing assistance, but the plan doesn’t make me feel secure. This makes for a real hazard – how does someone with impaired mobility get out if there is a real emergency? For the drills I wait in my designated spot until the drill ends, but that isn’t going to do me much good if the building is on fire. I joke about tossing my chair out the window and shimmying down on the massive wad of telephone wire under my desk, but somehow in reality I don’t think that will work.

So my desk job really isn’t as safe as I thought it would be. While here and there these hazards catch me off guard, send me to the floor, and cause me immense pain by jamming my bad foot or knocking over trash cans, I have become hypersensitive to every surface my crutch tips hit. These 5 hazards are not just in the office, but everywhere, including your home. Hazards are a part of life and experiencing life is worth the risk. When using crutches to walk you need to develop a sixth sense that makes you more aware of the environment around you.

P.S. If you are using crutches for the long-term, then I highly recommend Thomas Fetterman’s Tornado Crutch Tips. It’s a $48.95 investment that will greatly reduce falls.

Thanks for reading! Please subscribe to never miss a new post or stop back in two weeks. Next post – How Volunteering Saved Me!

“Being a positive person is not about ‘being happy’ all the time. It’s about finding the bright spots in situations.” ~ Unknown

Social media is overloaded with all kinds of quotes on being positive and being happy. These quotes are liked and tweeted daily, but reading them isn’t magic. The ultimate search for happiness isn’t going to come from reading or tweeting a quote. This quote, however, spoke to me, as in a way it provides instructions for helping you be happy. If you think that you need to be “happy all the time” to be positive, you will most likely find yourself unhappy. What we need to be doing instead is exactly what this quote says: “finding the bright spots in situations.”

Recently my thirteen year old daughter became a Bat Mitzvah. She was the last of my three children to become a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. While my wife and I were attempting the grueling process of planning the table seating, we decided to get out my older two kids’ albums to help us out. As we started flipping the pages of my oldest daughter’s album, the only thing that popped out at me were my crutches. My perception of the pictures was as if the photographer had zoomed in on only my big gray crutches in every picture. Next I opened my son’s album and began leafing through the pages. My eyes began to well up and a tremendous wave of sadness came over me as I realized my crutches were once again the only thing I could focus on. At that moment the reality of my leg hit me. The sadness was the realization that for the past 6 years I have been on crutches; the sadness was that my kids would have a difficult time remembering me not on crutches; the sadness was once again the third Bat/Bar Mitzvah album would be filled with pictures of me on crutches, and the sadness was realizing that my entire future would be attending graduations and weddings on crutches.

Does this mean I am unhappy? Does this mean I am not a positive person? Not at all. What this means is I am human and even though I’m a positive person, there are going to be things that upset me, disappoint me and make me sad. It is not possible to never feel sadness, and if you are constantly searching for “being happy all the time” you are setting yourself up for unhappiness.

Think about it – what would it take to be happy all the time? Being happy all the time would mean you are happy with everything that happens. Disappointment, death of loved ones, death of pets, injury, sickness, and tragic events all happen to everyone, even positive people. These events cause them heartache and sadness, just as they would with anyone. No one is happy about these things. The key is to mourn, be sad, release your emotions and then focus on the positive things in life.

I am certainly not happy all the time and this often causes people to feel that I am not a positive person. What they don’t realize is that it took one hell of a positive attitude to get through six ankle surgeries that forever changed my life, living with chronic pain, adjusting to being disabled and losing my career. If I wasn’t a positive person I would have thrown in the towel and sat on my couch, filled with self-pity, collecting disability insurance for the rest of my life. It was my ability to focus on the positives that pushed me out the door, to volunteer, try new ways of doing things and to achieve a new career. It had nothing to do with being happy all the time. In fact, I believe that in order to stay positive after sustaining a permanent disability you need to take a day here and there to let yourself be sad for your losses. Augusten Burroughs says it perfectly in an article published in The Wall Street Journal, How to Live Unhappily Ever After. He states “Sometimes just giving yourself permission to feel any emotion without judgment or censorship can lessen the intensity of those negative emotions. Almost like you’re letting them out into the backyard to run around and get rid of some of that energy.” I have had my share of dark days and still allow myself a dark day here and there, however I don’t let these days negatively impact my life. It is impossible not to have those sad feelings deep inside and suppressing them only leads to anger and negativity. By letting them surface every once in a while it releases the negative feelings, giving you the energy needed to maintain a positive outlook.

Well maybe not so much!!

In every adverse situation I find that looking for a positive makes it easier to handle. If you dig deep enough every seemingly difficult circumstance can have a positive, and having the ability to find that positive just makes thing easier to handle. If you can’t find a bright spot in the situation, focus on all the other positive things in life.

The following are a few examples of situations I was able to find positives in.

In the past six years I have had six ankle surgeries and spent years recovering on crutches, which only resulted in me becoming unable to walk without the use of crutches. Not one day has gone by where I have not been grateful that it is my leg and not a life-threatening disease. Every day I have gotten through by saying “It’s my leg, it is not life-threatening, the worst thing that will happen is I have it amputated and learn to live my life with one leg and crutches.” I am able to keep my life and that is a huge bright spot in this situation.

Losing a career I was passionate about was devastating. I had already worked through the first three surgeries and the stress of working and dealing with my leg was destroying me. I wasn’t helping my leg or my career by continuing to struggle. I was overwhelmed with stress in having to take time off for surgery, returning to work before being physically ready, and the fear of this all causing me to lose my job. The positive of losing my job was that it made the next three surgeries easier to deal with. It provided the opportunity to get the surgeries done without the constant worry about getting back to work or losing my job hanging over my head. The reality was that I needed that time of not having a job to worry about to focus on recovery both physically and emotionally. I was able to fully focus on recovery. Not having that pressure made the recoveries easier to handle. In the end, while I say that I could have taught on crutches, I do believe in reality it would have be too stressful not only physically, but emotionally as well. I would have hung on to that job no matter how difficult it became for me. In the end I would have ended up in a much worse place. The second positive in that situation was that I didn’t have to make the decision myself to give up my career, as it was made for me.

I think it goes without saying that the worst part of having a leg injury is having to get around on crutches. I too had a difficult time dealing with the crutches in the beginning. It was my decision to see that it was not the crutches that were the problem, but my leg that made the difference. I found the positive by viewing the crutches as the tools that allowed me to walk and live my life. The crutches then became a positive thing as opposed to torture devices to bitch about.

So what is the bright spot in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah albums?  Actually there are three: 1. Without my wonderful wife and three terrific kids there would be no albums. (always a positive in my life) 2. I was there being a supportive father. Not only was I there, but fully participating in the ceremonies not letting my bum leg stop me. 3. Someday my children will show these albums to their children and say “There’s your Grandpa on his crutches, he never let his bad leg stop him from being our father”. My sadness soon faded.

With each of these negative circumstances I was able to find a positive in the situation. I was certainly not happy with any of these adverse circumstances, however I had the initiative to search out the bright spots in them. In the end finding the positives gave me the strength to power through. It would not have been possible for me to maintain “being happy all the time”. In fact, I don’t think it would have been healthy to have been happy about these things. Trying to have been happy through all of the past six years would have ultimately driven me to depression. Yet, being a positive person made it possible for me to push forward and live happily.

Being happy all the time is overrated! As Augusten said “Seriously, who among us is having a “Great!” day every day? Who feels “Terrific, thanks!” all the time?”

Stop worrying about being happy all the time. Instead, focus on finding the positives in life and happiness will follow!