My brother recently sent me a picture of my dad and me, taken in 2011. I am wearing a necklace given by a friend as a semi-gag gift. It’s a little pink computer on a chain, in celebration of the publication of my blog.
I’m not good with dates, and I couldn’t tell you if asked when I started this blog, but I knew I only wore that necklace on one trip and the picture was taken in 2011.
And that is when I realized my blog is 10 years old.
Wow.
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| My dad Frank Diamond and me in 2011 |
When I was going through torturous years fighting my rare non-Hodgkins lymphoma, friends suggested I write about my experiences. Good idea, I said. But first I have to be able to sit up at the computer without being in horrible pain. I deflected all suggestions about writing while lying in bed or using a dictation program to compose. My three decades in journalism taught me to create while I type sitting up and I simply couldn’t break the habit.
So I took an online class on how to start a blog. Ha! my-tech-friendly kids said. You do not have to take a class to publish a blog. Well, I did.
Our instructor made us sign up for Facebook and Twitter, which I had been reluctant to do. She helped us customize our websites and focus on our missions. We had several writing assignments a week and we improved though feedback. So when we were ready to publish, we had several posts ready to share.
After six years of living my new disabled life, I had plenty of material. I had spent nearly five months straight in a hospital bed, finished a 15-month regimen of intense chemotherapy (enough, my doctor said, to kill an elephant), faced temporary paralysis and the inability to speak. I had lived with excruciating pain due to multiple compression fractures and dealt with steroid-caused osteoporosis and cataracts. I was released from the hospital and began intense home physical therapy to regain my ability to walk. Then the cancer came back a year later. In this round, I faced a terrifying bone marrow transplant, total body irradiation and chemotherapy that was seven times stronger than what I endured before.
I began another slow journey of recovery.
I had enough experiences and opinions to fill a book.
Instead, I wrote my blog. Fifty-six posts in the last decade: 23 the first year, 14 the next and two or three in the subsequent years. In 2019 and 2020, I only published one. Last year, although I had two topics in my head for months, I didn’t write one. I was spurred on to compose recently after realizing theviewfromthehandicappedspace had turned 10 years old.
My excuse for not publishing more? I’ve been living my life.
Going to an exercise class twice a week, reading books, going to movies, celebrating happy occasions, mourning bad news. Meeting up with friends and family. Hugging and virtual hugging a lot. Attending book club meetings, going out to breakfasts, lunches and dinners and occasionally brunches or happy hours. Going on vacations, attending plays and concerts. Taking every opportunity to toast at every occasion, sometimes multiple times at a sitting. I am mindful of celebrating that I am still here with others whom I love.
I’ve also been busy seeing endless doctors, dentists, oral surgeons, physical therapists, acupuncturists and specialists I had never heard of. Test after test and appointment after appointment.
After a decade, I’ve reached a point in my life where I think I am physically as good as I’m going to get. There has been a change for the worse in my ability to walk and balance. The neuropathy in my legs has intensified and I am weaker and more imbalanced than I have been in years.
While doctors order tests to find out if there is a medical reason for this and I attend regular physical therapy appointments, I am getting by doing all the things I used to do, but with rides and assistance from dear family and friends.
But I still plan on sharing through my blog. I know it has helped a lot of people already.
In 2011, I chose the title for my blog and I wrote its purpose: For people who find themselves in lives they hadn't anticipated: seriously ill, disabled or caring for someone who is. I wrote a paragraph about the blog and I wrote a backstory, giving a short summary of how cancer had upended (and almost ended) my life. I wrote about everything I experienced. I criticized the layout of disabled bathrooms, lamented the poor choices of walkers and raged at rude able-bodied folks who park illegally in disabled parking spaces or rush by me to occupy the only handicapped stall in a public restroom. I talked about staying in one of the worst nursing homes and putting up with nutty (and possibly dangerous) hospital roommates. I lashed out at a concert ticketing system that is not friendly to disabled people.
I also celebrated the good things I have found over the years: the kindness of strangers, the establishments that have gone out of their way to assure accessibility, the comfort provided by my stuffed bunny and the joy of graduating to a real bed after more than a d0zen years in a hospital bed in my family room. I basked in the support of my family and friends, particularly at an amazing surprise fifth stem cell transplant birthday party.
My most popular post by far was the one about disabled parking. I heard from lots of people in many states and a few other countries struggling to understand the rules. Some wanted to fight a parking ticket when they forgot to put up the disabled placard in a car, some wanted to know if their placard would be recognized in other states or countries (generally, it is), others sought to understand the requirements where they lived. And some wanted to rant against the lowlifes who park in the disabled spots with fake or improperly used placards.
While I don’t preach about my experiences with cancer or my blog, I am quick to offer support when I hear of someone with a new diagnosis or preparing for a bone marrow transplant. I’ll email my go-to blog posts: one about hearing the initial news and the other a summary of important things I learned. I offer any other help they need.
Dreading chemotherapy-induced hair loss? I’ll send the post I wrote about the hairy truth.
Facing a bone marrow transplant? I’ll send my post about that and will counsel you by phone, as some have requested.
Many people have expressed gratitude for this advice. And two bone marrow transplant recipients have personally thanked me (via phone calls) for helping them through the process. One person had his wife call me from his hospital bedside to ask the name of the drug I had recommended to ask for if the nausea got too bad. (It was intravenous Ativan.)
All is not easy in my life these days. I have a compromised immune system so keeping safe through COVID-19 is vital to me. Also, my recent spills have been particularly troubling. I had three serious falls within a five-month period in 2021. (I’ve had more than a dozen since getting sick, but these were extra concerning due to their frequency.) Two required visits to urgent care to make sure I hadn’t damaged my bones or brain when I slammed my head against a door one time and the asphalt the last. I did not, meaning my Prolia is helping with my osteoporosis and my head is pretty hard.
I believe I’ve accomplished what I intended when I first started the blog: to make folks more aware of what living in a disabled world is really like and providing a glimpse into the inequities I and others face on a regular basis. I am ever grateful that I survived and beyond touched by the support of my family and friends. I am thrilled when I hear from friends whose eyes have been opened to the needs of the disabled: someone who teaches her children it’s not OK to use the handicapped stall, another who tells me how I would love a particular place because it is very accessible, and one who visited a restaurant ahead of time before we went to lunch there to investigate the layout and the ladies room. Another friend, when deciding on an office for her psychology practice in an historic building, made sure there was an accessible room for disabled patients to use. She was asked did she have any disabled clients? No, she replied, but I might. And others who rented offices in the same building might. The same friend made her remodeled bathroom accessible for when I come to visit. Still another added a grab bar in the shower for when I am a guest. Others bought a portable ramp I can use when stepping into their home.
After I found myself in tears hearing the Tom Petty song “I Won’t Back Down” the first time I slowly navigated a Relay for Life survivors’ lap, I adopted it as my theme song for life. “You can stand me up at the gates of hell”- I might be leaning against a wall and desperately clinging to my walker - “but I won’t back down.”
My New Year’s resolution? To keep living my life and writing a blog post or two.
Happy 2022.