Doug

     Yesterday I felt frustration and self-pity creep up on me. It kicked off after my shower when I was attempting to put my clean clothes away. When I carry anything, I have to hang my armpits on my crutches and move the crutch with my torso rather than my arms. I positioned my right crutch a little too close to center and crushed my right fourth toe (the good side) into my crutch while swinging through, which sent me to the floor.  I fell gently in slow motion and nothing felt tweaked or torqued on my left side at all. However, having a sore right foot now reminds me of how long I have to go and it is easy to slip into self-pity.  But pity is not active, nor a constructive emotion in any way.  So to draw strength from the experience, I think of Doug.

Mt. Rainer, October 2008

     

    Doug was a patient I cared for back when I was in nursing school in Seattle, working as a nurses' aid.  He was one of two patients I kept correspondence with when I moved on after graduating from nursing school. Though nursing school cautioned about blurring the line between therapeutic and personal relationship, it was impossible to avoid being Doug's friend![-] Doug was born with cerebral palsy, but inside his twisted body was a brilliant mind and absolutely the most caring, emotionally intelligent person you would ever meet.  Even while his body jolted in spasm, seemingly working against all his physical efforts, he maintained a playful sense of humor. He was realistic about his physical limitations but never let them limit him. He gathered the resources he needed to carry on practically, always flashing his warm and inviting smile along the way.

     As a classically trained singer, I participated casually with a group of singers that put on concerts a couple of times a year when I lived in Washington state. I invited Doug to one of these concerts when he genuinely showed an interest in coming to hear me sing. I asked if he had a way of getting there and he wrote saying "Of course, I'll take the bus!" The concert was at a church in Bellevue which was across the lake and in a place that seemed a little obscure to get to by car, let alone by bus.  I had doubts that he would make it. I never should have doubted him! As I looked around the audience just before the concert was about to start, there was his smile, cruising in on his electric wheelchair with his caregiver. Of all my friends who came, he was the only one who took 3 different busses and wheeled 1/4 of a mile on an electric wheelchair to get there. And he acted like it was no big deal. That was Doug. He transformed any potentially frustrating circumstance into a practical problem to solve without an ounce of self-pity.

     Doug and I were Facebook friends which became our primary form of communication when I left the pacific northwest in 2010. He was a fan of the Facebook "poke", which was playfully fitting for his sense of humor. Sometime around 2012, it occurred to me that I hadn't been "poked" in awhile and hadn't seen his posts in my feed. I knew it was not possible for him to "unfriend" anyone. When I went to stalk his page, it now read "Remembering Doug". In 2011, Doug was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident while driving his electric wheelchair on the side of a road. The driver was eventually apprehended, but that is very little consolation to those who had been infected by his positive attitude, goofy sense of humor, and gleaming smile.

     In memory of Doug, I dedicate my recovery to banishing self-pity and addressing each problem with practical resolve; to solve what I can, and accept what I can't.