Not Alone

It should’ve been obvious. Having already had three successful surgeries, a fourth should’ve been the obvious option. But it wasn’t. The seven-year gap between surgery three and surgery four was filled with all kinds of questions: What will my life be like after this? Will I have to walk with crutches ever again? Will my struggles with Cerebral Palsy lessen? Will people keep staring, assuming, asking questions?

I couldn’t possibly sum up the past seventeen years. But all good writers know how to tell a story, and this one begins a few months ago, when August was drawing to a close. This had to be the defining moment: the surgery that would finally fix the inversion on my left leg, a common attribute of Spastic Diplegia CP. No longer would I suffer joint pain, would I sway back and forth from one side of the room to the other, trying to defy my disability. When someone says hospitals, most people think death. But that day I thought, possibilities. I laughed along with the security guards and sang “Loveshack” by the B-52s. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy; nobody knew it was a mantra. It distracted me from the reality: somebody would soon take a scalpel to my body, changing my life forever. I arrived that day living an old life, a tired life. I left with another: one where I wouldn’t let my Cerebral Palsy defeat me. Rather, I would grab it, make it fit like the perfect pair of Converse shoes.

I learned to endure whispers from people I’d never know and turn their words into white noise; to admire a child’s inspiring curiosity. At eight years old, I learned to explain my diagnosis to my best friends. I learned to push through the pain, to ignore the disconnection between my brain and the rest of my body. I’ve fallen in the most creative ways imaginable: backwards, forwards, flips, flops, down flights of stairs, and off a ski lift when I was ten. Five out of five times, I got right back up again. Five out of five times, I made a joke out it. So for the fourth time, I changed into a scratchy blue hospital gown and begged my mother not to cry. And begged her for a snack, any snack.

In the midst of organized chaos I caught a glimpse of my guiding light: he leaned against the nurses’ station with his legs crossed, already dressed up for the big show: his light blue scrubs fitting effortlessly, looking like a bowing faithful servant. And although in the vow of the Hippocratic Oath he promised not to be God, in a few short hours he would change my life.

In the OR, anonymity washed over me, as I entered a sea of masks. Their actions were stiff, robotic. The room was not dark and theatrical like on television. Instead it was plain, white, and sterile. I asked the masks for their names, but their voices were muffled, indiscernible. The only voice I heard was the voice of a nurse named Prima. “Prima means cousin,” I said. She said, “I know, I’m everybody’s cousin.” My legs shook a little less. I lay down onto the cold operating table, my arms spread out in sacrifice. I heard the sounds of Velcro getting tightened against my legs. I heard Prima tell me only once, “I’m going to hold your hand.” The voices melted into one and said, “You are not alone.” My world went black.

Now, the possibilities are endless. I am no longer bound by crutches hanging from my wrists. Which is not to say that my Cerebral Palsy has been a plague my whole life. It’s been a part of me, but not all of me. It has seeped its way into my writings, and how I see the world. It’s what allows me to meet another child with CP and say, “I feel like I know you.” Although walking will be easier, my CP will still be there. I’ll still be the person who tries to conquer what I’ve been told I physically can’t, who sneaks past security in the Eiffel Tower, who climbs a sand dune in Bordeaux trapped in stifling heat, who climbs Machu Picchu in the pouring rain. I used to think I was the only person to see the world the way I do. Maybe someday I’ll walk up to a child and say, “In this terrifying world, you are not alone.”