using humor as a mechanism during rehab

[Rehab Revolution]

Hi everyone -- this is the most recent post in my blog about rehab and
healing from traumatic injury, located at
rehabrevolution.blogspot.com. I hope you enjoy and follow the blog!
These are written for you!

It occurred to me that perhaps I should discuss humor. But why?
Disability acquisition is a heavy topic. Healing is hard. The
experience can be very dark and very isolating.

But an invaluable tool to coping with that difficult stuff is humor.
It's absolutely essential to be able to laugh at the inevitably funny
scenarios you'll find yourself in. It's not necessarily making light
of a dire situation or disrespecting the fact, even if it may seem
that way. It's a mechanism for reminding yourself (and others) that
things are really not so bad, and not to feel too sorry for yourself.

It's also a sense of humor that keeps a lot of oldies alive for so
long, so keep that in mind!

So I'm going to start posting occasional anecdotes involving my own
silly, sitcom-worthy moments. Feel free to laugh, and relate! If
you've got any funny stories to share, please e-mail me or leave a
comment below.

To start, I'll tell you about this morning. I recently took on a new
project; after deciding it'd be a fine idea to start an herb garden
and spending absurd amounts of time at Home Depot this week learning
about soil, compost, and how to build a planter box, I had a big
planter box custom-built yesterday out of cedar.

Apparently planter boxes you buy ready-made at the store are about
twenty-four to thirty-six inches, probably because they're intended to
sit under windowsills. But I had a vision floating around in my head
of a much longer, wider wooden box which apparently was unique to me
and my mind, because after standing around for another forty minutes
Googling and calling various home improvement stores and plant
nurseries, no one carried such a thing. So I returned the next day and
managed to get a box probably about forty-two inches long and very
artistically designed (thankyouvehmuch ;)) custom built for me for
less than ten bucks. (Whoo!)

I got up at 8.30 this morning and decided to sand the box so I could
begin staining it a cherry wood color.

So FYI, after wrestling the box from the garage and through the house
and onto the back patio, I learned that wood stain is a very stubborn,
sticky substance. After painting my first layer around the entire box
(which is about 75% my size) and having the foam from the brush pop
off multiple times, I began painting it with my hand clutching the
foam to the handle.

When I finished, I sauntered back inside ready to rinse off the stain,
covering my right, good hand, and vaguely splattered on my left wrist,
my right foot, and my legs.

Soap did not help. It was like an invincible, thin layer of glue. The
stain stayed put as though it were its job to permanently stain your
skin, and in a panic, I attempted to phone a friend -- who didn't pick
up -- with my cleaner, but affected left hand.

I totally didn't know what to do. The stain wasn't coming off and was
covering every fingernail, every crevice, in the nooks between my
fingers -- missing only the lower half of my palm -- to have my one
good hand covered in noxious wood stain was a total "Oh crap" moment.
And if I didn't get it off, I was going to have to avoid touching
anything, cooking, eating, and using electronics . . . indefinitely.


Now, this was a whole other beast to purposeful, safe CIMT. At least
with that harmless cream puff mitt you know that if something truly is
impossible -- or if you're in a rush -- with the affected hand, you
can always pull it off and do it properly with your unaffected hand.
This, on the other hand, was akin to CIMT-ing by accident using,
instead of a mitt, a very real risk of gluing my own "good" hand to
either my own body or to any other object in your immediate vicinity.
(Try explaining that to strangers. Scratch that; in this situation I'd
likely to not leave the house -- probably because I'd have to lock the
door using my teeth.)

In case you're itching to know how it is I'm writing this right now
(because you know it'd take me about an entire day to do so left-
handedly), here's a tip for any of you dreaming of taking part in the
industrial arts of DIY: Goo Gone. It's a lifesaver. Thank goodness!
Because I was not so keen on the idea of waiting two days for someone
to come and help me scrape off my own skin.

On the plus side, the herb garden's going to look fantastic.

On the not-so-bright side, I have to paint my second layer in about an
hour.

Perhaps I should invest in some gloves.

To our healing,
Pamela