be thankful for what you have

One of my greatest pet peeves ever, and I mean, this is at the very top of my list, it makes me even madder than when people cut me off while driving: people who don't appreciate what they have.

I know for a fact my life isn't perfect. No one's is.  But that doesn't give us the right to not be thankful and appreciate the wonderful things we do have.

I've always said in my mind, "There's always some one out there worse off than me." And when I really think about it, I realize that I'm selfish.

I'm thankful for a lot of things:

• My parents: I don't know what I'd do without them.  We may have our arguments and get upset with each other, but they're my back bone and support me when I need it the most.
• My brother: My brother and I are fifteen years apart in age, but I love him so much nonetheless.  He's married and has kids, lives in another state; I don't get to see him him very often.  But regardless I love him.
• My numerous friends: There are far too many to name, and I hate name dropping.  I'm a friendly person and there are some of my friends I honestly don't know what I would do without them. They've helped me through all the hard times.
• God: I'm a believer, I have faith in Him.  Without Him, I wouldn't have been able to survive as much as I have as well as I have.  There aren't enough words to say how thankful I am to be a believer.
• The roof over my head.
• The food I eat.
• The education I receive.
• The country I live in.
• The community I'm apart of.
• Legg-Calves-Perthes Disease: I know this is odd to be on this type of a list, but honestly if you think about, all the hardship I've gone through with this has made me who I am.  I've become a strong individual who is determined.  Out of anything I could get diagnosed with, I got LCPD, it's far better than a lot of other diseases that other kids my age are diagnosed with. With that I'm thankful.

The list can go on and on, but those are just a few.  As with anything in life, everything as their drawbacks.  But things could be soooo much worse.

Last spring I was doubting a lot of things.  One of my close friends, whom I call my brother, told me to go home and make a T-chart, on one side list everything, everyone, anything I'm thankful for, and on the other, the stuff I'm not.  I did it, and guess what side was far longer?  Thankfulness.

Like I've said there is always the good and the bad side to things.  It seems that most people automatically turn to the worst.  If we just took the time out to realize how important these things and people are to us, we'd realize our lives aren't as horrible as we have always thought them to be.

There's always someone worse off than you.  What are you thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving

can't we just agree?

The last couple of weeks have been rather emotional on me.  I've been to several doctors and they each seem to say a different thing, and each one makes me more and more upset.  It seems that none of them can agree on anything other than the fact that my hip is definately not a normal one.  And to be quite frank, we already knew that.

I think the only way to explain anything is to start from the beginning and work up to the present, but like I've said, it's been rough on me, and I won't get into too much detail just for the sake that it gets confusing to me and I may not remember much else.

We went to see the specialist on the 12th, and my parents and I were very impressed with him.  He explained things down so we could understand them and made us feel a little bit more at ease.  He looked at my x-rays and told us that it looked like I had some dead bone in my hip where the blood circulation was getting to.  He also told us that the ball of the hip was flattening out and that I shouldn't be walking on it much.  He told us to get a MRI and then see what would be next.

Got the MRI done last Friday, I ended up missing the entire day of school that day when I should have been back at 11:30 in the morning.  Found I was claustrophobic.  They ended up sending me to a place in Wichita that had an open MRI machine.  I got through that 30 minutes by thinking of forensics and debate things and almost ended up falling asleep at the very end.

Monday, we saw another doctor.  To make it plain and simple, I wasn't impressed and neither were my parents.  It felt that all he deemed important was to make himself look good and important, when in reality we couldn't understand hardly anything he was saying, and he was making us feel confused.  He checked my range of motion, and then preceded to say that my range of motion was really quite well and that he wasn't concerned about that...next he told us that my right leg was slightly shorter than the left by like an inch and that it would be really beneficial to go and get a lift put in my shoes so I could walk easier....then he went on boasting about how he had done work when he was a resident at some place that was big and fancy and how he knew all this wonderful and great surgeons that could help and how he could get in contact with them...and then he told us that we should look into this one surgery, that had this huge name to it, that was extremely complicated and that only a handful of people in the U.S. could perform.  And the closet one was an 11 hour drive.  He kept repeating that we should stray away from thinking of a hip replacement.  He also loosely threw around Legg-Calve-Perthes Disease as an issue.

There was probably more to the appointment that he said, but I mostly tuned him out....I really wanted to smack him.

Yesterday, we went to yet another doctor.  We waited close to two hours before he got to us, but he seemed to be the most helpful of them all.  He stated the obvious once again, that I had a bad hip.  And told my mother and I that I was in between a rock and small place.  He basically said that the most useful thing they could do would to be replace the hip.  He asked about Shriner's from eight years ago.  It made me feel a little better when he started rattling off doctors at Shriner's and listed the one that I had, and to find out he had even worked with the doctor.  He basically told mom and I that he wanted me to go back to Shriner's and get evaluated and see what they think of a hip replacement.

We called St. Louis on the way home from the doctor's last night, left a message.  They called today, and mom said the earliest they could get me in was January 21st.  Needless to say, mom is still trying to get me in sooner than that.

I've probably missed a few things here and there, but I'll try to keep everything updated as much as I can.

day by day

I'm beginning to figure out the happy medium between using the wheelchair and walking, just enough so my hip doesn't hurt to terribly bad.  But it's still unpredictable.  There are times, that I hurt more in one instance and I'm fine the next.  It's still difficult to gage how much I can do because of my pain tolerance barrier I had put up several years ago.  By the time I realize I'm hurting, I'm in a lot of pain and don't want to do anything but lay down and either ice or heat my hip.

We're just taking everyday as it comes, my parents and I.  We're adjusting as best we can.  It's a pain to have mom and dad drive me every where again and pull the wheelchair out of the back of the car, but it's just one of those things we have to do.  And I'm very thankful that I have a set of parents who are willing to help me as much I need it.  I don't know what I'd do without them when times like these arise.

what nerves?

This morning I updated my Facebook status from my phone to "is nervous for today".  And, truthfully, I was.  Going into school in a wheelchair is something that I hadn't wanted to do until I really absolutely needed it, but I had to do it.  I couldn't take the pain in my hip at the end of the day when I would basically cry myself to sleep.

I didn't like the thought of all eyes being on me as I rolled myself through the commons towards my locker.  I didn't like the thought of having to ask the inevitable questions; "What happened?", "Are you okay?", "Why are you in a wheelchair?"  But I sucked it up, because I knew I would have to do it sooner or later.  I chose sooner.

I got my first class, with the aid of one of my best friends whom opened the door and waited patiently as I got things sorted out with the teacher.  As I sat there through first hour, Spanish 1, attempting to catch up from my absence from last week, I realized that I was going to be just fine.  I didn't care what people thought of me before I had to use the wheelchair, so why should I now?

Throughout the day, I became more comfortable in asking people to open the doors for me, and politely asking them to move out of my way instead of just kicking them with my good leg something I had thought very seriously about.  Needless to say, I'm fine being a wheelchair at school. My teachers are very understanding and helpful.  My friends make me laugh when I need it the most and keep me from falling asleep, and I even let them push me down the hall.

I think I need to put a seat belt on the wheelchair...just as safety precaution.

getting used to the staring

Yesterday my mother and I went out to do errands, I took the wheelchair with me because I knew there wasn't a chance that I could do all that walking and be in good shape at the end of the day.  I got reacquainted with the wheelchair very quickly, it seemed the only thing that had changed from eight years ago was the fact I had grown and I felt the wheelchair was extremely small.

At the first store, I hadn't paid attention to anyone, I was focused on helping  my mom shop for groceries the best that I could being in a wheelchair.  The next store was different; I hadn't been paying attention to anyone again, focusing on what we needed to get until a little girl, who I assume was with her grandmother stated, very loudly, as she came closer to me that I was in a wheelchair.  And then she asked her grandmother what happened to me, and she told the girl she didn't know.  The girl then went on to ask her grandmother if I had fallen and hurt my leg.

At the moment, I felt like I wanted to cry.  Because I wasn't used to the attention of being in a wheelchair and then having it being stated for all the store to hear.  It makes me want to crawl into a hole when I feel the stares because I know people are judging me.  They don't know what's happened to me, or what I'm going through, but they're judging me.  And that's one thing I hate the feeling of.

I know that within time I'll go back to ignoring people and their staring, but it'll take time to get used to it, just like everything else.