I’m still getting on with my recovery, and I’m slowly regaining the ability to do tasks that I couldn’t do immediately after my fall. I’ve found that I go through four stages with tasks:
- I can’t do it myself
- I can’t quite do it myself
- I can just about do it myself
- I can do it myself confidently
I’m now eight and a half weeks post-fall, and most tasks are at stage 3 and 4 now. The things I can’t do myself involve stretching my arms up – namely, hanging washing outside. Indoors, I can use stepladders to help me reach things, but it’s more difficult outdoors.
There aren’t many things left in stage 2 – things I can’t quite do myself – but dressing myself was something I couldn’t do entirely myself until recently. My main issue was getting my head through t-shirts, and for this I needed assistance.
Stage 3 is when I can do something, but in a rather ungraceful way or with the help of additional tools. To take the example of dressing myself, I found that laying a t-shirt out on a bed, and then pushing my head through it like a cat going through a cat flap, seemed to work. Not graceful, but it gets the job done. Another example would be drying my back; I would lay the towel over the sink so that I could grab it with both arms.
It’s this third stage that has given me some insight into what it would be like to have a permanent mobility issue. I’m hopeful that I’ll make a full recovery, and regain all of my mobility (although it’s not guaranteed). But I appreciate for some, their limited mobility is the best that they can manage, and that’s where mobility aids and various life hacks come into play.
Great reflection on the four stages of recovery. The cat flap analogy for putting on a t-shirt is both amusing and insightful – it really illustrates how we adapt when facing physical limitations. Wishing you a continued recovery!
Hard work but worth it?
Good that you appreciate “what if this were it?”
Best wishes for a full recovery