Slumping Badly

Yes, the title is an obvious reference to baseball, a sport I adored growing up. My team as a child was the NY Mets. In the 1960s it was easy to root for the Mets, an expansion team. They stunk but were lovable losers after their inception. But a funny thing happened to the Mets in the late 1960s. Thanks to outstanding pitching they won the World Series in 1969. I was just a little boy at the time, a very sick one too. Back then I was spending most of my time on neurological wards at Columbia University Neurological Institute. Those were hard times, an era when a child was expected to act like an adult and do one thing--get better. That was my job and I was expected to nothing else but focus on recovery. That meant no television or radio and often bed rest. I was supposed to wear a hospital gown and did so--I had no choice. But I did have one thing going for me: great parents that fought tooth and nail for me. Hospital rules, rigid and inflexible, were bent to the breaking point on a regular basis. I was allowed to have the very first transistor radio sold to consumers. This technological marvel fit in the palm of my hand and I was able to listen to each and every Met game. In the Fall of 1969 I was the most popular person in the hospital. I knew the score of the Mets games as they were all played during the work day. I was a folk hero--people from all over came to see me and asked "what was the score?". I was a rock star. Like all stars and great teams success was fleeting. By the mid 1970s the Mets stunk again.

For the last week I feel like the Mets--I am in a deep slump. The setback from last week has really thrown me for a loop. I am essentially miserable. I will not be healed by Christmas as hoped. Ski season is likely lost. My life sucks. I have no sense of normalcy. I do not look forward to waking up. I am just watching life pass me by. I miss my ordinary life filled with work, fun, errands, and aggravations. Yes, I even miss people so I must be in bad shape! I want to drive my car and cannot because I am too weak to get in and out by myself. I want to grocery shop. I want to get up and go, go, go. None of that will happen anytime soon. I have missed the Fall, an entire season and months of activity. I cannot seem to focus in anything else but this loss. I am going buggy laying in bed day in and day out. Yet writing this outrages me. What a wimp! How ungrateful can I be! My family sacrificed for me and I sit her feeling sorry for myself. Worse yet, I know I am lucky, I escaped a nursing home. Institutional life would have killed me.

Knowing I am in a deep slump and doing something about it I am learning are two different things. To continue my baseball analogy I am in the dog days of August and batting under .200. How to end this slump is I hope a matter of time. I need one good day of work to get me going. I can thankfully sit up slightly more--the wound on the right side of my butt is already healed. I do not want to push things though. I am looking at computers and hope to be on line on a regular basis soon. I cannot decide what sort of computer to buy. My latest thought is to forego a desk top Mac and go for the Airbook. Of course I also need to figure out how to pay for this--no small feat given the fact the plumber was at my house most of the day. Let's see a new computer or running hot water? Hot water will win every time.

Well, there is no neat and tidy end to this post. I like to have a clear beginning, middle and end to everything I write. Not today. Just cannot come up with the goods, sorry. See I told you I am slumping, even this post leaves much to be desired. Indeed, it contains the sort of self pity and woe is me attitude I despise. I thought long and hard about hitting the delete button but changed my mind. I hope this will jump start me. I do have much to say. The Ashley Treatment is on my mind as is a way to get bioethicists and disability activists together. I also read a great book by a paralyzed woman with two kids. She wrote eloquently about her experiences and the bigotry she encountered as a mother. This fills a huge gap in the literature on disability and feminist scholarship. All this will wait until tomorrow. My sitting time is now spent. Ugh, I am frustrated in the extreme. I suspect if I could sit all day I could break out and get work done.