Their Health and Mine, (wheelchair edition)

Not long after moving into our house, I got the call from the school that my daughter had broken her leg.  I'll start by saying there were lots of tender mercies to help us through the event.  My mom was in town that week she got hurt, and got to spend lots of hours watching the other kids while I went from clinic to hospital to x-rays, etc.

One unexpected experience was my daughter's new life in a wheelchair.  The break was just such that it required a thigh-length cast and completely no weight bearing in any way.  Learning our way around wheelchair life was an extremely eye-opening experience.  I have total awe for anyone who does this day in day out for years, especially if you also have younger children.  Its a maddening dilemma when faced with lifting a baby or toddler or helping the one in the chair.  And bathing like-a-baby a child who weighs much, much more than a baby is work.  We only had a few weeks like that because my wheelchair  bound 7 year old became creatively independent  finding her own little way to do just about everything.

As I write this I realize that the 6 weeks of wheelchair-bound-child stress I was under was really a mostly positive one.  But the thing with stress is that it is there even when things are positive the stress can become problematic when "stacked" with a number of other stressors in triggering mental illness.  This seems to be the case for me.  I think I have a pre-disposition for mental illness genetically, and while being a generally happy person can, with the right amount of pressures.......POP!  :)