Magical

The day before, I had walked home from an appointment, instead of waiting for WheelTrans. It had been a good walk, a nice day with sun and a bit of warmth in the air and although I hurt when I got home, it wasn't bad. I knew I'd have to sit still for a couple of days to recover, but it was worth it. I then got my shot of Enbrel, bought groceries and did the usual that you do in a normal day.

The next morning I woke up in a good mood, feeling remarkably uncreaky considering the activities of the day before. I puttered about my usual morning routine and it wasn't until a small amount of Tylenol made me feel a bit funny, that I realized I hadn't needed it. That I felt funny because there was no pain to absorb the painkiller. Kinda cool.

So I decided to push it. I decided to pop down to Staples to look at a printer, maybe bring a camera and see what I could see. So I popped, I looked (and bought - retail therapy at its finest), I laughed with the sales clerk and then I wandered around the neighbourhood. The sky was blue, the sun was warm - really warm, the first real warmth of the year – and I could hear the chirp of sparrows, singing the praises of spring in a frantic mass chorus. And there was green. Green and purple crocus, tiny green bumps on bushes, so light, so tender it made my heart ache and lift at the same time. I took pictures, lots of pictures - somehow the known becoming unknown as the world was born again, adding colour nourishing to the eyes, where none had been for so long. I hummed to myself, enjoying connecting visually to the world, enjoying my mind being light and nimble, unencumbered, not weighed down by the grey fog of pain.

As I walked home, I could feel the wind lifting my hair, caressing my face with the warmth of the sun and I didn't flinch from cold, as we have all done since last fall. I was almost home before I noticed it. Or rather, before I noticed the absence of it. The place in my right shoulder that had spend all winter screaming in protest when I made it push the joystick on my wheelchair to go places, was almost silent. All it did was let me know that it was contracting, working, doing its job, without protest. My feet weren't howling at every bump, my neck wasn't in spasm. I wasn't ignoring pain, because there was hardly any pain to ignore.

That was the moment I realized I was having a great day. That was also the moment I cried a little.

That day was last Tuesday. Sure, I've hurt like a sonofabitch since and gotten myself a shoulder injury from pure stupidity, but the pain hasn't gotten me down. I know now that where I was last summer is possible again. That one great day connected me to hope, to believing that anything is possible, to remembering that some things are within my control, that I can help the healing. I've begun to remember all the things the pain has obscured for so long.

Reborn indeed.

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