I tried

Ok, I was determined I would not follow social norms. I would be polite and use my best communication skills, diplomacy and patience in all interactions with my partner’s family.

You know how you hear stories of ‘horror in-laws’… Well, I always thought people were being precious and slightly selfish for not getting along with people. I wasn’t going to be like these people.

However, as I’m not aiming for sainthood and as displacement of my personhood has always brought out the fighter in me, I realise that I cannot do it. I cannot get on with his family.

Oh, yes! I forgot to mention: I have a disability and, as no other people I have met before, his family have become FIXATED with this “physical” characteristic of mine. They see me only through the lens or, in their cases, lenses of disability. There must be enough “lenses” between them and me to stop a nuclear war-head. (I know that “nuclear war-heads” are now a bit passé and I’m showing my age. Perhaps I could up-date the metaphor by speculating that the “lenses” might even provide insulation from “weapons of mass destruction”). Thick……..these “lenses” are multiple and super thick!

One by one they have managed to do things that can only be categorised as anti-social. We’re not just talking the odd faux pas. No, no, these are major insults ranging from the fact that I might not be able to eat solid foods to a suggestion that my partner, when away for work, was away for ‘respite’ (Although I [through my workers] actually do most of the washing, ironing {that too} etcetera.).

So I have decided to say, “I tried” and to remove myself from all communication with them.

A Real Live One……

Blog post for the week of13 July… Woow Friday the 13th and it feels like it. Having been in hospital since Tuesday, today I had my suspicions confirmed: I was being treated for pain but the cause was poorly identified. Well, you could say ‘wrongly’ as different parts of the body are “different parts of the body”.

However, my doctor is good and believes in working with other people. This is how another doctor became involved. This was a “real live one” – someone who I met many years and who has had many, many, many years of experience treating people with my disability.

This doctor performed the gentlest examination I have ever had and declared the excruciating pain to be a bilateral copying of a condition I already had on the other side. Of course, this makes perfect sense to me as when the pain and degeneration started on the other, the symptoms were exactly the same.

Later in the day, the diagnosis was confirmed by x-rays. If it is possible, the x-ray confirmation of the “real live one’s” diagnosis was almost anti-climatic as I already relieved to have a diagnosis.

Knowledge really is power because as soon as I knew what was causing the pain I understood it.