Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry by Julia Fox Garrison Read Free Book Online

the inevitable clipboard.
    “Were you impulsive before this happened to you?”
    You look at him squarely and say, “If you mean impulsive like buying something extraordinary that I didn’t need in the flash of a moment, then yes. If you are saying impulsive as in a danger to society, no.”
    He nods sagely.
    “Anything you’d like to add?”
    “Yeah. I’m not lashing out because of what happened to me, and I’m not in denial. I just don’t like this place. It has to be the single most depressing room I’ve ever been in in my life. And P.S., if not liking the linoleum is a reason to reprimand me, even though I had an up-close and personal meeting with it, then I think we should also be talking to somebody else about a reprimand for the color choices in here.”
    “Is that it?”
    “No. That’s not it. Isn’t this a place where people come to get help recovering from whatever has, you know, befallen them? If that’s so, then why does everyone act like I’m an inconvenience? Or a description? Or a line on a chart? I need positive interactions. All I’ve gotten here is negativity.”
    Impulsive.
    You hate goddamn labels.

Which Hand Was That?
    IT MUST BE MORNING BECAUSE sunlight is coming through the window in greasy streaks. A man in a white coat is looming over your bed.
    “I’m your physiatrist.”
    “Why do I need a psychiatrist? I thought I was doing pretty well handling this.”
    “I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a physiatrist.”
    “What the hell is that? I’ve never heard of that specialty before.”
    “I’m the doctor responsible for your overall rehabilitation. When you’re done with the critical care doctors and stabilized enough to work on your rehabilitation. It’s the ‘physical’ recovery we work on here.”
    Your physiatrist is a little elflike man who has curly black hair and a tendency to look at you the way a keeper looks at an animal in the zoo. When he scrunches up his nose he reminds you a little of Peter Rabbit.
    Dr. Bleak.
    “Touch your thumb to each finger separately,” he says, nose squinched.
    You touch your thumb to your finger. No problem: Your fingers are quick and agile.
    “That was easy,” you say triumphantly.
    “Not your right hand,” Dr. Bleak complains, agitated. “Your left hand.”
    Oh.
    He wants you to do the same trick with your left hand. The one that isn’t really there. The one that’s a faraway radio station your brain can’t seem to tune in to.
    You try. Nothing. Your arm doesn’t even move. It lies on the bed, dead. “Is that bad?” you ask.
    “Only if you plan to use the hand again,” he says, then flashes a tight little smile. “Seriously, if you can’t do it now, you won’t ever be able to do it. You should probably get used to that idea.”
    Nice way to squelch a little thing called hope, you think. The doctors here seem to specialize in identifying ideas you ought to get used to.
    He writes something on his clipboard. You try to read upside down—something you used to be able to do—but you can’t. Written words don’t make sense. The hundreds of cards you receive don’t make sense. You simply can’t read, at least not more than a stray word here and there. Your left-side neglect removes all the letters on the left side of the page.
    You manage to pick up a single word from the clipboard: “Denial.”
    You picture yourself using your nonexistent left hand to flip him the bird.
    Everyone needs a goal. For now, that one is yours.

With Apologies to David Letterman
    The Top Ten List of Post-Stroke Indignities—Institutional Edition
10. LOSING TRACK OF YOUR LIMBS. Your hand and arm have become appendages that are more like pieces of luggage that you have to lug around. One evening, while you were positioned on your left side, you lay facing your mother as she sat in a chair next to you. You had been talking normally when you suddenly panicked because you didn’t know where your arm was. Your eyes wide, you said to her, “Where