Sacred places and the case against being a couch potato

Posted on April 29, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

Sometimes I wonder why this injury had to happen to me, why not some couch potato who could just as easily sit on a sofa (or now, a wheelchair), and spend hours watching TV or playing video games, and having little to no concern about the weather outside or their natural surroundings. My situation would probably be easier if I were like this. Being a sedentary, physically unmotivated person who wanted nothing more than to be passively entertained would translate quite well to the common prognosis of life post-Spinal Cord Injury: sit on your ass, get around in a wheelchair, abandon hope of regaining who you were prior to injury, gain weight, and do your best to deal with your “new” life. But as I’ve stated many times, I am the furthest thing from this type of person and so I have to accept that while the path of NOT being a couch potato may be extraordinarily harder for my recovery (I would think a couch potato may not even bother to try to recover), the potential reward of rediscovering any of the active things that I used to do is monumental and motivating to me to continue my fight.

I believe we all have places that are sacred to us, and many of my sacred places are associated with nature, the outdoors and the absolute sense of serenity, joy and fulfillment I get from visiting these places again and again. Over the last two weekends I had the pleasure of going to two of my sacred places: Yosemite National Park and the coastal areas of Marin County, north of San Francisco. On both occasions, generous friends opened up their homes and I was fortunate enough to share these experiences with incredible friends who treated me as I always had been, and recognized and respected how important these places were to me.

My earliest memories of Yosemite are as a child, grumblingly pitching a tent during a pouring thunderstorm, hiking underneath craggy peaks and swimming in its cold yet refreshing rivers, streams and lakes. I have explored many different corners of the park, which in more recent years has come in the form of finding solace from the large crowds by backpacking through its less-traveled trails and finding its more hidden treasures. I was nervous about coming back to this sacred place without the ability to hike and move as I used to. Honestly, I had avoided a trip to Yosemite since my accident specifically because I didn’t want my memories and nostalgia to overwhelm and upset me.

By contrast, I had spent a bit of time in the gorgeous coastal areas of Marin County as a teenager, but my deep appreciation for this sacred place developed in the last few years through my frequent road bike rides through this area. Living in San Francisco meant that I would often hop on my bike, cross the majestic Golden Gate Bridge and escape from the city to surround myself with coastal redwoods, rocky beaches and winding hilltop roads.

To be honest, it was excruciating at times to be in these sacred places in a wheelchair, unable to stand up or walk or go anywhere with uneven terrain. It pained me to conjure cherished memories of past experiences and to wonder if and when I would ever do those things again on my feet. I would be lying if I didn’t admit this, but to my surprise, I discovered that despite my physical limitations, it was fantastic to be in these places again. Those ethereal granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley haven’t changed much in hundreds of thousands of years, and there’s no reason for me not to continue to appreciate their beauty now. Sitting in the sun with friends, eating freshly shucked oysters and enjoying a beautiful afternoon was a bit more tedious because I was stuck in a wheelchair, but it wasn’t enough to take away from savoring that moment. I even figured out a way to lean my knees against a picnic table and stand up with the help of a couple friends.

The mixture of emotions that comes with going back to my sacred places, albeit in a very different physical state, is a difficult challenge, but at least now I’ve reopened the door to enjoying them and can use fresher memories of these places to fuel my continued recovery.

Getting towed by two black labs

Standing up!

Another dose of perspective: handling my hands

Posted on April 18, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

We all take our hands for granted. There. I said it, and I really mean it.

I have written about a lot of my different physical and mental challenges here, but I have yet to dedicate an entire post (or more) to one of the most devastating aspects of my Spinal Cord Injury: my hands. Take a moment and just think of the small, fine movements you use your hands for throughout the day. Examples:

Unscrewing a cap of toothpaste; splashing water on your face, squeezing shampoo into your hands, buttoning your shirt, zipping a jacket, tying your shoelaces, fastening your belt, unscrewing a jar, peeling open that annoying thin aluminum wrapper that always rips on a small container of yogurt, pouring milk into your coffee, eating with utensils in both hands, grabbing your keys, locking the door, turning on the ignition in your car, pulling a credit card out of your wallet, handling cash, signing a receipt, and on and on and on…

Every single one of the functions and movements I described above are significantly impaired for me because of weakness in my hands and fingers. Some of the things I listed are still nearly impossible for me (squeezing shampoo), a few have become easier and more routine (signing a receipt, unscrewing toothpaste), and some I can do decently, just more slowly and weakly than normal (tying my shoelaces, buttoning my shirt).

I have become entirely accustomed to not trusting my hands. I am constantly dropping things on the ground. I still can’t hold my laptop or a heavy book with one hand. I am patiently waiting for the day that I can hold a plate of food comfortably without feeling like I’m lifting a 100 pound dumbbell. Opening packaging or a wrapper on everything from a pack of gum to an envelope is still a massive challenge and I’m stuck asking for someone’s help much more frequently than I would ideally like. I have to sleep with a bulky splint on my hand to help my fingers extend and open and feel more limber the next day.

Now I’ve only discussed basic yet necessary tasks and movements for everyday function without even mentioning maybe the most disturbing and frustrating aspect of my injury and its effect on my hands. Put aside for a moment the obvious challenges of someone outdoorsy and active like me who cannot walk or run or hike or do any of the active things I love to do. Let’s accept how excruciating it is for me to be cooped up inside on a nice day when I’d normally be riding my bike or playing soccer in the park. The two “indoor” activities that I enjoy the most, activities that are just as important in defining who I am and what I love to with my time – playing guitar and cooking – have been taken away from me. When I tell people that this is the most humiliating and debilitating injury I can think of because of the number of ways it affects me, THIS is what I mean. Cooking a big dinner for friends or having a lively jam session were fundamental elements of my personality, and now I can’t even do these. This is why it feels like almost my entire identity has been crushed by my Spinal Cord Injury.

I have zero intention of turning my blog into a whinefest to complain to the world about my problems, so I’ll express the entire motivation and reason I’m writing this rant: I am extraordinarily lucky to have the function I have. Even I, in this state of constant frustration and recovery, feel incredibly fortunate for the strength and abilities I DO have in my hands.

Breaking my C5 and C6 vertebrae in my neck would typically mean that I have limited range of movement in my shoulders, weak biceps, floppy wrists with almost no strength to bend or extend them, little to no function in my fingers and hands, and significantly weakened triceps. Most of the other people I’ve met with my injury have had a much bigger struggle with their hand function. It’s one of the first things other SCI patients quickly recognize when they see me. “Dude, you’re a C5?? Your hands look pretty good…” No one knows exactly why my hands were spared some of the damage and it just continues to prove how mysterious and misunderstood this injury is.

Now if this isn’t amazing perspective, I don’t know what is. Every time I want to complain about not being able to strum my guitar, write music or chop onions as quickly and ably as I used to, I think of how much worse it could be and how lucky I am to at least have the function that I do have in my hands. I admit, I work extremely hard on my hands, at least 2-3 hours a day doing various stretches and exercises (like typing) that have helped me tremendously. To finish on a positive note, I want to recognize a few of the small accomplishments with my hands in the last few months: I can type at almost the same speed I used to, flossing is effortless, I can hold my chef knife and chop much better than before, and I’m trying to fulfill my musical desire by learning the piano. Here’s to continued improvement with my hands, to us all recognizing how amazing our hands are and not to take them for granted.

A much needed change of scenery

Posted on March 26, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

After months of the same routine, of going to the same places on the same days and feeling trapped in redundancy and “Groundhog Day” syndrome (you’ll have to see the movie if you don’t know what I’m referring to here), I decided to shake things up a bit. I’ve come to Salt Lake City, Utah for two weeks to try a different rehab center and to see what kinds of ideas, practices and exercises I can learn from their experienced team of therapists and SCI professionals.

I have to explain how important this change is for me. For years, I travelled frequently all around the world, mostly for work but also for pleasure and before I could get too bored or accustomed to any one place, I was on a plane to a different destination. Even when I was living in one place and leading a less itinerant lifestyle, I was constantly taking weekend trips to the mountains, camping, hiking and exploring the natural outdoors which I love so dearly. So adding to the long list of physical challenges from my accident is the challenge of routine and boredom from doing the same thing over and over.

Over the last few months, as so many of my friends travelled to different destinations and shared their excitement either directly to me or indirectly through Facebook and social media, I had to quietly hear them and fight the envy and jealousy I felt and battle the frustration of not being able to travel myself. In fact, before my accident, I had booked a trip to Lebanon and I’d tentatively scheduled a hiking trip to Patagonia. All of that went out the window. Now, while Utah isn’t a new place for me (I used to work here quite a bit), it’s the break from routine that I’ve been waiting for and I’ve come to Neuroworx to make the most of my experience.

Neuroworx is a non-profit founded by a man who suffered a bad cervical Spinal Cord Injury himself. He was a practicing doctor, with a family and a successful career and, as I know from my own experience, his entire life turned upside down in one instance. (You can read his story here, very inspirational) Although he had trampolines his entire life and had used them for years, his accident occurred on his trampoline in his own backyard. Being a physician, he knew almost immediately that he had suffered a Spinal Cord Injury and so began his own recovery.

Being told he would never walk again (sound familiar??) he teamed up with an incredible physical therapist who worked with him and helped him recover. Now, while he still deals with many of the challenges of SCI, he is walking and has recovered tremendously. That physical therapist became his partner and she is now the head PT at Neuroworx, coordinating the regimens of the many patients who come through their doors.

I’m excited for this change and will try to post a couple updates from here. Now it’s time to enjoy the mountains and the break from routine.

Flash Forwards

Posted on March 22, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

I’m boarding a train in a foreign country. As I scan my ticket to confirm my destination and its tricky spelling, I sling my backpack over my shoulder and step high up onto the train as it starts to rumble out of the station.

I’m walking through my old San Francisco neighborhood towards the tall trees of Golden Gate Park swaying in the gentle but persistent coastal breeze. I see my old neighbor on his way to work and wave at him as he walks on by and greets me from across the street. “Been a WHILE since I seen you man! How ya doing?”

I swing open the door to the restaurant and hurry excitedly up the narrow stairs. I enter into the dining room and see my friends gathered towards the back, ready for the birthday celebration. I can’t help but notice the tantalizing cocktails neatly handwritten on the chalkboard behind the bar. I decide that after months and months of preserving my recuperating nerve cells by avoiding alcohol, it’s time to order a drink…

We all know what flashbacks are, memories from the past of a specific moment that we remember clearly that are brought back into present consciousness. Similar to flashbacks, I have “flash forwards” that I’m sharing here now. Much like flashbacks (which we remember for certain reasons), my flash forwards are complex, rich in detail and as vivid as any memory. Thinking of them places me in those exact moments, my senses come alive with what I’m surrounded with and I feel as though I am experiencing that moment in real time. My smell (the sense that is most linked with memory) is heightened with the scents that I take in and I can realize the absolute realness of my flash forward.

Having studied psychology in university and always being interested in how the brain functions, I have read a lot about the damage and difficulty of painful flashbacks for some people. With or without a trigger, someone may relive a particularly challenging memory and become traumatized by the larger impact of that flashback. It’s not to say that all flashbacks are negative memories, far from it in fact, but I suppose I just don’t hear of many people talking about their flashbacks of positive memories very often.

My flash forwards are incredibly helpful for me. They fuel my recovery, they give me something specific to work towards, and they represent a light at the end of the tunnel in some ways. They show me what life can look like when I’m not on the dark side. They provide specific details of situations that I can’t presently experience. They remind me of what is most important to me and why I’m fighting so hard everyday to regain the physical abilities that I lost in my accident. Instead of trapping these experiences into history and saying that they’re a part of a past that I won’t ever see, I place them in front of me, in my future, with the utmost intention of realizing these flash forwards.

They are NOT wishes, they are NOT dreams, they are NOT aspirations or hopes. For these reasons, I can’t tweak them and change them around as I see fit. Much like memories which are based on facts of how things happened, flash forwards are structured the same way, as inherent truths, based on facts of how things WILL happen. That’s why they come to me organically and vividly and I have little control of how I see them. I just choose to accept them and see them as a glimpse into a definite future.

I’ll leave you with one more flash forward. As I have mentioned on this blog, just three days before my accident, I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life on a backpacking trip in the mountains with friends. For months, I have struggled many times wondering if I will ever have an experience like that again, if I’ll ever feel the joy of carrying all of my material needs on my back and venturing into the beauty of the high mountains…

The weight of my backpack feels heavier than it used to on previous trips but here I am again slowly hiking up the narrow trail surrounded by the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains of Eastern California. I’m definitely putting more weight on my hiking poles than I was expecting but I’m still stepping up the gravel path in anticipation of the alpine lake at the top. My steps are a bit crooked as it becomes apparent by looking at my footsteps that my left leg is still a bit weaker than my right, but I feel strong nevertheless. The air two miles high is thin and cool and I’m panting regularly but the sun radiates through my entire body, warming me through from the inside. I’m enjoying each step I take in my rugged hiking boots and I smile and realize I never knew that this moment would come again.

Sleep to dream to walk

Posted on February 6, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

I’m hiking on a narrow path, slowly ascending and winding as I feel the crunch of the hard yet forgiving dirt beneath my feet with each step that I take. It’s late afternoon and the sun slips in and out of the looming clouds as it starts to set, its rays lingering on the tops of the lush jungle surrounding me. It’s hot and humid and I can feel the sweat collecting on my brow as I push forward and continue to wind up the trail, each step bringing me closer to the summit with an expansive view of the valley below. I’m chatting with friends and enjoying this serene moment when something hits me: I am walking! This isn’t so hard! I look down at my legs to confirm what I’m experiencing and, surely enough, they’re working just fine, striding along and without any difficulty. “Wow, this is so much easier than I expected,” I think to myself as I remember that in most of my everyday exercises, standing and taking a step on the parallel bars takes a lot more effort than this. The lucidity of the moment hits me but the experience continues as we progress up the trail. Finally, we reach the top and I stand confidently as I slowly take in the contrasts of the red dirt under my feet, the deep green of the trees below, the golden rays of the warming sun and the fading but persistent blue of the sky…

Moments later, I’m lying in bed, feeling the heavy weight of my legs as I struggle to lift, bend and move them and change positions. Immediately, I remember where I just was and realize that it all seemed so easy, that I didn’t have to pick up my legs with my arms or feel the constant discomfort of my dangling feet and ankles awkwardly twisted underneath the blankets. I remember the calmness of knowing that standing and walking are as simple as they always were and don’t require the hours of effort that I put into them everyday.

Going back to my childhood, I’ve always had a close relationship with my dreams, wanting to understand the meaning behind each person and each experience in my dreams. In fact, for the last several years, I remember my dreams everyday without fail, both good and bad, which is why I could wake up from a long and seemingly restful night of sleep and feel irritated and tired because of a specific dream I had. My favorite dreams, much like waking life, were the ones in which I was physically active, moving quickly, running, playing soccer, or discovering beautiful sights. The bottom line: my dreams and unconscious brain activity have a profound effect on my conscious emotions.

Now here’s where I think it gets interesting. Since my accident, the content of my dreams really hasn’t changed. Even though I spend the entirety of my day frustrated and struggling with the challenges of being unable to move most of my lower body, in my dreams it’s a different story. Consistently, I have dreams like the one I described and almost every time, I have an “aha” moment where I realize the magnitude of my ability to walk or stand or run or play. Sometimes that moment is even more comprehensive and I think, “wait a second, wasn’t I in a wheelchair? Isn’t it ‘normal’ for me to be rolling around in a stupid chair and if that’s the case, why is it so easy for me to kick this soccer ball or run down that path?” I wish I could say that every night I have these incredible, enlightening dreams where I’m doing all of those things I’ve always loved but even in the more benign, strange, or lackluster dreams, I’m still walking or standing or running.

My explanation is simple: So much of my conscious emotional state is focused (or should I say obsessed) on wanting to recover and get back on my feet that deep down, at an unconscious level, my brain is reminding my body of what it feels like to use my lower body as it was. Or, put another way, my waking life is spent dealing with the difficulty to engage my legs so when I go to sleep, all of that pent up desire is channeled into my dreams and I’m back in my old body, able to walk and stand. One last observation I’ll share is that from much of what I’ve read about dreams and through my studies in psychology, it is said that lucid dreaming (that moment in which you realize you’re in a dream) is often when you wake up. For some reason, it’s unusual and challenging to know that you’re dreaming and stay in that dream. Which makes it all the more perplexing to me that I’m consistently having these lucid moments, realizing halfway through my dream that I’m walking and that this moment is different from “reality”, but that my dream continues and I don’t wake up right away.

I realize I’m indulging quite a bit into the fuzzy world of psychoanalysis and I hope I didn’t lose too many of you to this point, but if you’re still reading, and you have any thoughts or ideas you’d like to share, I’d be happy to read them. We’ll see what tonight’s dreams have in store…

A six-month reflection

Posted on January 9, 2013 by arashbayatmakou

It has now been exactly six months since I suffered my Spinal Cord Injury. Six months in which everything I knew and did in my life dramatically changed, six months in which an outstanding community from near and far came to support me consistently and with arms wide open. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this moment.

On the one hand it feels like an absolute eternity that I’ve had to live with a severe disability, unable to walk, unable to work, unable to do all the activities that contributed greatly to my mental and physical well-being, and battling everyday with the uncertainties of my injury. No one tells me if and when I will recover or how much. Doctors, physical therapists and medical practitioners seem so obsessed with liability, lawsuits and the fear of giving me false hope that they barely show excitement at my accomplishments. Of course for me, any major development (i.e. a wiggling toe) is a tiny step closer to my ultimate goal of full recovery, but all I hear from the medical establishment is to accept the current situation and “become as independent as possible”. They don’t push me to challenge my limits or boundaries, they don’t encourage me to take part in other therapies and treatments, they don’t encourage me to keep hope alive; I’ve done all this through my own will and volition. It definitely feels like I’m a lone fish swimming upstream against a relentless current that says to accept things the way they are.

On the other hand, in some ways it does feel like time has passed rather quickly. I’ve found a rhythm and schedule that work for me. No less than six days a week, I’m driving to different parts of the Bay Area to access the therapies and treatments that have contributed so much to my improvement thus far, and filled in the enormous hole that my medical insurance (and their approach) has left for me. I’m shocked by how quickly summer changed to fall and now to winter and the new year. I’m astonished that I’ve already been through so many mornings having woken up and been angry at not being able to jump out of bed and onto my feet. Or how many evenings I’ve endured with a sore butt from sitting in a chair all day.

I have purposely set my goals high, because I know that compromising how I set my goals compromises my potential accomplishments. So I will stick with my goal from the beginning, that on my birthday this August (over 13 months after my accident), I will be on my feet and walking. Everyday can and does often feel like a struggle, but if I’ve made it six months already and improved so much, I can only hope to exceed my expectations for the next six months.

Being short is no fun

Posted on December 29, 2012 by arashbayatmakou

There are MANY things I hate about being in a wheelchair. I won’t even begin to list them now… But let me share just one frustration that I’ve noticed more recently: being short.

Since I’m sitting down all the time, everyone becomes a towering, basketball player-like presence literally (not metaphorically) looking down at me. I’m sure there are plenty of shorter people out there thinking, “thanks for pointing out the obvious genius, but this is what I’ve been going through my whole life”. I admit, I’ve never really understood the plight of shortness and to be honest, I’m not exactly tall either, 5’11″ to be exact. So while I’ve never exactly been an imposing presence due to my height, the shortness of sitting down is a particularly humbling experience. I must be four foot something sitting in this damn chair, a height I haven’t been since elementary school.

It sucks having to look up at people all the time. It’s no fun having to crane my neck – yes the same neck I broke two vertebra in that still doesn’t have the same range in motion – and train my eyes to look towards the clouds in order to catch the passing glance of a growing child who just hit five feet as he walks past me. Every time I greet a friend or give a hug, it bothers me so much that they have to bend down and almost fall over just to get closer to me. Having a bunch of people standing around me talking reminds me of being a little kid, thinking that the towering adults could have secret “tall” conversations that I couldn’t hear and wishing I could be part of the club.

One of the many ways in which mental strength can help in recovery from SCI is the visualization of healing and sending visual images that confirm one’s objectives to the brain. Whenever I do standing or walking exercises, the therapists are quick to bring a mirror in my view. Seeing myself standing is a positive response and will help my body remember (and recover) the sensation of being on my own two feet. You can imagine how much I enjoy the few but coveted minutes of standing I get not only for the sensation of stretching my body and bearing weight on my legs, but because it reminds me of what it feels like to stand tall, look people at eye level and rid myself of craning my neck up towards people and feeling like I’m four feet tall.

Recovery is my religion

Posted on December 17, 2012 by arashbayatmakou

I’ve never been a religious person. Throughout my life, I’ve generally taken a more or less scientific approach to religious belief and struggled with the notion of believing in something that can’t be proven. But ever since doctors told me that they could not predict my healing and that it would be wise to prepare never to walk again, I discovered my own religion: my 100% recovery.

Ok I’m not trying to get into a big existential discussion on religion or God or an afterlife, so just bear with me. All I’m saying now is that my injury has taught me to accept that it’s perfectly reasonable, and commendable, to believe in something that can’t necessarily be proven. Even immediately after my injury, in the most pain I’ve ever experienced and unable to feel most of my body, I refused to believe that my body was permanently damaged. I decided right then and there, that no matter how difficult the process and how long the recovery, I would get back to my feet and walk again. This belief only gets stronger with every day that passes.

I refuse to accept defeat, I refuse to embrace a life in a chair, I refuse to consider for one second that I won’t eventually stand up and walk on my own two legs, yet I have no proof for this. As I’ve written before, there are no specific prognoses for people with Spinal Cord Injury. Doctors don’t specify that a percentage of people with my injury do recover, and how can they really, since it’s hard to define what “recovery“ means exactly. It can mean something different to different people. I recently overheard another SCI patient say that as long as she could use her hands and get back to work, she would be happy. That was the objective of her recovery and she would probably adjust her expectations and goals accordingly. Well, that’s NOT the case for me.

I want to run and bike and stand and sprint and hike and stroll and stand atop mountains and swim in alpine lakes and do all of the things I love. There is no holy book outlining my beliefs but this doesn’t stop me from believing wholeheartedly in the possibility, and eventual reality, that I will recover fully. Many of the therapists I encounter in the conventional, Western approach tell me the main goal of recovery from an injury like this is to become “as independent as possible”. In other words, they can’t predict that I will recover and get back to normal (another nebulous and subjective term) so they suggest I adapt to whatever my current situation is and become “as independent as possible”. Every time I hear this, it makes my skin crawl. Maybe this is like a member of the Latter Day Saints church trying to articulate the beliefs of Mormonism to a Buddhist monk who has taken a vow of silence. Or vice versa. Each person may respect the other’s right to believe what they want, but the belief systems could not be more different. Well, the same goes for me.

I honestly don’t care what doctors or anyone else tells me anymore, because I KNOW, with every drop of blood I have in my body, that I WILL walk again. My recovery is my religion, and I am the most devout, fundamentalist believer.

The Infuriating Case of SCI Semantics

Posted on December 7, 2012 by arashbayatmakou

Hospital staff person – “I’ve heard about a lot of quads doing that. Now are you a quadriplegic or a paraplegic?”

Me – “Neither! I hate classifications like that! I’m a nothingplegic because I’m just someone who had a bad accident, but is on his way to recovery and hate being categorized or classified with this bullshit terminology!”

Ok so that’s not exactly how I responded to the good-intentioned hospital worker who was talking to me about my life post-rehab, but that’s exactly what I wanted to say. Maybe I’m oversensitive about this one but I’ve always disliked it when people tried to categorize me. I would think it was difficult to do that since I’ve always taken pride in being a multi-dimentional person with a diverse range of interests and hobbies. I mean, in high school for example, (the absolute peak period of time when people classify each other), I was a soccer playing, gym-going, guitar-playing, swing-dancing, fantasy book-reading, political protest-attending, newspaper editor/jock/nerd/musician. I had friends in all different circles and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that I couldn’t be boxed into a category. Now the same thing goes with this quadri/tetra/paraplegic nonsense that I keep hearing about.

(Technically, quad and tetra mean the same thing, motor or sensory impairment in all four limbs and para means an impairment of just the lower extremities)

To me, classifying myself as any of these admits defeat to a certain extent. When you break an arm or sprain your knee, do you start referring to yourself by a different term? If you get bronchitis or a severe flu do you accept some silly title that means little to you but probably makes a world of difference to medical students attempting to diagnose you? Of course, Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is obviously more significant than the flu or a broken bone and will take much longer to recover from, but my approach and outlook is that of a person with a temporary condition who is on the path to recovery. I see this injury as a hindrance, an obstacle, an extended stay in jail on the Monopoly board before I break out and piece my body back together and get back to full health.

Maybe because doctors are so reluctant to give SCI patients false hope is why they so frequently tell patients they won’t walk or recover and that leads to people to accept these self-defeating terms and calling themselves quadriplegic or what have you. Well, that’s not for me. No way. The only classification I can accept is that of a human being, albeit a badly injured one on an extremely difficult path, but I see myself as fundamentally no different than I was before this injury. I’m not going to start calling myself something different, and with all my intention, ambition and desire focused on a 100% recovery, there’s no chance I’ll ever refer to myself using any of these ridiculous terms. End of story.

A dose of perspective

Posted on December 2, 2012 by arashbayatmakou

Perspective is something that I certainly don’t lack with all the challenges I face, but something nevertheless that I think I can always benefit from, so I’ll share a bit of perspective I gained today. I was chatting with another SCI patient at the new gym I started going to (photos and more on that coming soon) whose injury was similar to mine, just one level higher up on his spine. He was injured almost four years ago and had made tremendous progress all over his body, but he had not yet recovered function in his hands. He saw me adjusting something with my hands and told me how “lucky” I was to have even the limited hand strength that I have especially since it’s so “soon” after my accident.

Let me be perfectly honest about two things: 1) I don’t feel lucky about much these days and 2) the last few months since my injury have felt like an eternity, and I would never use anything like the word “soon” to describe the time elapsed since my world turned upside down back in July.

But this is where perspective comes in, and I thankfully recognized that this could be a learning moment. Instead of dwelling on my own challenges, I was being handed a golden opportunity to zoom out for a moment, to recognize that things could always be worse and to feel grateful for what I have. It was a perfect example of taking something negative and turning it into a constructive, positive experience. Yes I want nothing more than to be able to walk again. Yes I want to recover as quickly as possible and do all of the things I miss so much. Yes I feel like I’ve suffered enough already and have learned a lifetime of lessons in the last few months. But it’s important to maintain my perspective and always celebrate what I do have…

Arash Recovery

My journey to get back on my feet

Category Archives: Identity