Irony

Life is full of irony. This morning I was remembering that many years ago I was a transporter in a hospital. My job was to pick up patients and take them to various places in the hospital. Now it is I who needs to be transported.....ironic.


As I reflect back on all of the various jobs I have had over the years, all of them required a lot of walking and some physical strength. I was a pool boy in my late teens and very early twenties, that job required a lot of strength especially opening and closing pools at the beginning and end of swimming season. I look at that time in my life and smile. I was young, in good physical shape and happy. Things have certainly changed since then except for the happy part. I would still call  myself happy and an optimistic person.


For many years I was a waiter. You talk about a lot of walking, I don't know the exact calulations but food servers walk several miles during the course of their work. I never thought about it then, but because my ability to walk has been severely curtailed, I remember what it was like.


Most recently was a decorative painter. I can't begin to tell you what a physically demanding job that was. Carrying and setting up paint supplies, up and down ladders all day, and sometimes climbing as much as three levels of scaffolding.


I have never had a"desk job." Every job I think I have ever had required walking, standing, climbing, sometimes even running. Isn't it ironic that I would now find myself very challenged to do any of those things?


Today and everyday I appreciate what I was able to do with such ease.I am also thankful to live in a country that takes care of their disabled. A couple of the prosthetists (people who build prosthetic limbs) I have met make semiannual trips to disenfranchised countries like Haiti and Honduras and the stories they tell of the poverty, hunger, and lack of medical attention send shivers down my spine. Living  in those types of environments are difficult enough but imagine being an amputee in such places.


Perhaps one of the lessons to be learned having lost both of my legs, is to be thankful and appreciative that if this had to happen to me, than at least I live in a country that takes care of it's own--at least in this instance.