Thursday, March 15

underwater wheelchairing

Now in my thirties, I decided it was time to visit a health professional to see what my body might need that it is not producing for itself. Yawn, I know. But I've decided aging gracefully is really my best option considering aging is not an option at all.

My mother can attest to the fact that I am no fan of vitamins, since she's been trying to get a handful of horse pills down me since I was a kid. But I'm an adult now, and therefore responsible for my own nutrition. Looking at my new list of supplements, I quickly realized this was already a lost cause if I couldn't get excited about it. I had to get motivated.

So, after a bit of internet searching, I found and bought this fun little pill container...


You can find this and some other fun pill-popping incentives here. And that's my shameless pill box plug.

I'm just not sure all my pills are actually going to fit into this wee box. I suppose I was hoping I'd just find that I have a huge vitamin D deficit and leave with a prescription for more sunshine. But it's more serious than that. I haven't even had my blood test, and I'm already taking three new pills. Turns out our human bodies have stopped producing vitamin C altogether. Some animals, like goats, still produce it. So now I am supposed to pop 6,000 milligrams of C every day.

I think this nutritional boost may require taking out a loan.

But I'm going to need all the support I can get my hands on to get through the mountain of reading material that I've waded into. I honestly don't know how it came to this. No, that's not true. I know it was a combination of bookstore visiting, walking by sale racks, and recommendations of friends. It's my environment, one could argue. But before I knew what was happening, I'm treading water in the bibliophilic deep end.

And that's why I really should not have purchased an anthology of poetry by writers with disabilities called Beauty is a Verb, which I happened upon on display at a local bookstore. But look at the cover––it's irresistible.

I've been so busy climbing on ribbons and nursing under-the-weather emotions this week, that I've only skimmed through, but this book is already lifting my mood.

If that woman can scuba dive at the bottom of a pool in a wheelchair, I think I can pick myself up off the floor and open a book. If I remember to take my vitamins, that is.

And at the same time, it's reminding me to be kind to myself; to celebrate who I am and not who I could be. I am not alone. We are not alone. In sorrow and in triumph, we are the human community, the living poetry of disability. None of us can produce vitamin C. I propose a glass of goat's milk toast...
 
After all, being normal is, indeed, so overrated.

OneArmGirl