The View From Here (25-03)
By: Justine Chichester
“Sometimes life brings you full circle, to the same place you had been earlier, in order to show you how much you have grown.”
Between 2014 and 2015, I spent a lot of time in Jackson Memorial Hospital in-patient rehab. I suffered a spinal cord injury and hydrocephalus after falling in front of my home in late 2014, and several surgeries required that I stay in the rehab unit, at different times over the course of that year, in order to recover and learn how to navigate my “new life” as a person living with paralysis.
I have so many memories from those long days. Most of them are not good ones, either. I was sick for a long time while I was there. I struggled early on with my daily life as a newly paralyzed patient. A memory that always stands out in my mind, even now 10 years later, is when I would lie in my bed at night in that rehab room and stare out the window next to me. The streetlamps on the sidewalk below illuminated the people walking back and forth. Some nurses, some doctors, some visiting loved ones. Some were carrying lunchboxes and water bottles, backpacks and other things as they hurried to their destinations on that Jackson campus. As I lay there in my bed, I wondered every single night if I’d ever walk around again or even live any semblance of a normal life again, just like all of those people on the sidewalk below.
Recently I was asked to speak on a panel for second year medical students at the University of Miami about being a patient living with a disability. Now, after a decade of living as a paraplegic, hydrocephalus and Breast Cancer survivor, I was thrilled to contribute my thoughts and experiences to the conversation.
The University of Miami Medical School is located on the Jackson Hospital campus, and it is a very complicated maze of buildings, medical facilities and parking garages. So, yes, I got lost trying to find my way to the actual building where we would be speaking to the medical students. Exhausted after walking around much of the campus with my walker, and after asking a lot of people walking by for directions, I finally found the building where I’d be speaking. I’ll admit I was frustrated and not happy about the struggle it took me to get there.
Nonetheless, the panel went well, and a very insightful discussion was had with the large group of medical students. As I left the building, after a long afternoon, I walked down the sidewalk, towards the parking garage to get to my car and I stopped. I looked up. And I saw that window. It was the same window I used to look out of 10 years ago, paralyzed in my in-patient rehab bed. Here I was now…back in the same spot, but this time I was on that sidewalk, illuminated by the streetlamps. The doctors and the nurses and the visitors were all walking by. But this time, after a very long ten years, I was walking with them. Slower? Sure. With a walker? Yes. Struggling to walk back to the car? Definitely. But I was there, living my life and yes…walking. All of the things I once wondered if I’d ever be able to do again.
I paused for a moment. The memories of being up there in that bed, wishing for a normal life, flooded my mind. And here I was now, in that same spot I looked down on a decade ago, actually that life I was wishing for. I remembered all that it took to get here. All of the struggles, all of the pain, all of the time and the heartbreak I had endured over these ten years to walk again and to just live my life again.
These are the full-circle moments that come into our lives as a reminder. A reminder of where we were and how far we’ve come. I believe that this moment brought me the realization of how far I’ve traveled along this journey with disability, how far I’ve come along the way and how grateful I am to be where I am today.
