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My personal experience with paralysesThe childhood of a person with a paralysis can have a specially sad at moments, even if it is happy most of the time. The moments in which your paralysis separates you from the other children are normally short, but very intense. I can not speak for others. But when I talk about it with my clients, they always seem to feel just like me. The terrible moments are there, even when nobody else notices it. For instance, my paralysis is only on my right arm. so, I was quite capable of doing most things on my own. Consequently, I developed a pride on not having any handicaps. If any body else could do it and I wanted to do it, I could do it. I tried soccer and was good at it. But I found team sports very boring. The next year, ALL my friends joined baseball. I didn't want to play baseball. But I was left completely alone. Eventually, tired of being alone and watching them play, I decided to join in. But I could not bat or catch with one hand and through with the other. One arm is not enough to play baseball. Needless to say, my first experience playing baseball turn into a major defeat. Not being willing to accept defeat (let's remember that I had decided I had no handicaps), I went to a nearby empty parking lot and practiced batting till I was able to hit the ball. I would through the ball hard against the wall and hit it with the bat when it came back. I managed to bat only very low because my right arm could not be lifted. I used the right arm as a counterbalance to the left arm. The left was the arm doing the work. This was very effective because I looked normal, batting with two arms, and I hit rolling balls that were very difficult to catch. After I tried out for the second time, I was selected for the team. I could bat and I was a fast sprinter. My asthma didn't allow me to run far. But I could run very fast a short distance. After being in the team, I really discovered that I don't like team sports. So, I quit a few weeks later. Then I discovered that there were a few guys that did not play sports. They were the misfits, nowadays and here in the USA called geeks and nerds. I got new friends, broadening my horizons. This experience was not a bad experience. I learned a lot from it. But 40 years later, I still don't like to remember it. This was the first time I remember confronting my handicap. And what is worse, my parents must have been seeing me working hard in that parking lot at hitting the ball with the bat. They must have worried as I joined the baseball team. And they must have thought that I quit the team because I couldn't do it. Immediately after I quit, they enrolled my in physical therapy. I don't remember the conversations or whatever was said about it. But I remember hating physical therapy and feeling that my parents believed I was handicapped and couldn't even play a sport. Yes, these are the moments in which your paralysis separates you from every body else. As I said it before, my experience does not even start to compare to that of many others. But I know that no matter what your paralysis or problem is, working on overcoming it feels great. That is the first thing I teach every child that comes to me.
I will be posting other people's personal experiences in this pages. If you have an experience that you would like to post here, email it to me and if it is inspiring and well written, then I will post it here.
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