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

seizures. When he awoke from his surgery he discovered that he had had a stroke, which his doctors warned him could happen. Now he is absolutely livid about his condition.
    You find you have no patience for his “why me” attitude. Every patient in this hospital could adopt the same mind-set and make the same complaints. Did his way of thinking help him? No. It was simply a delusion, a cheap way for him to imagine that he was somehow superior to everyone else in the building.
    “I’m going to sue the doctor for doing this to me,” he says.
    “Weren’t you told of the risks prior to the surgery?” you ask.
    He screams his answer: “I signed some documents saying I understood the risks, but I didn’t think it was actually going to happen to me !”
    This guy is really getting on your nerves.
    “Listen,” you say, “you have got to stop looking around and blaming everybody. Start looking at yourself and saying, ‘Hey, I am going to get myself better. I am not going to put up with this condition.’ Take all your negative energy and put it toward recovery instead of wasting it by pointing at everyone else. Because in the end, you’re still going to be in the same condition—unless you do something about it. There’s a Chinese saying I heard once: ‘Hatred does more damage to the vessel it is contained in than the vessel it is directed at.’ Focus within yourself and you’ll have a better chance for recovery and a better life.”
    The stroke counselor is so pleased with your little speech that she asks you to come again and be a group leader. This surprises you because, physically at least, you are in worse shape than your counterparts. You expect a group leader to be someone who has actually made some kind of tangible progress.
    You decline the offer because you don’t want to belong to a group that makes pity parties a part of the routine. You won’t allow yourself to bemoan your own fate, and you know you will have a hard time listening to the inevitable whining and rage that will come from other patients. Plus there’s a lot of talk about setting and discussing individual goals as part of the group’s activity. You refuse to accept anyone’s idea of what your goals should be. Goal setting, you realize, is a personal matter.

Facing the Chicken
    IT’S YOUR FIRST SUNDAY EVENING AT REHAB, and Mom and Dad are visiting. Dad likes to have missions, and he can see that food is going to be a problem. He goes to Davio’s in Cambridge, an upscale restaurant where takeout is not an option. He sits down and looks at the menu and orders the roasted halibut with black bean and mango salsa and says, “Make it ready to go.”
    They don’t do ready to go.
    To get the order, he tells a sob story—one that’s true and has you as the lead character. The waitress relates her own story to him: It turns out she had a serious accident and was badly disabled for a while. She was in the hospital for six months. Dad is psyched to see that it is possible to overcome devastating injuries. Here she is a waitress, someone with a physically demanding job. He returns to your room all excited: “I just met somebody who was injured and couldn’t walk but now is walking and working.” You know it’s a brass ring he’s putting out there for you, but it’s also one for him, too. He’s having difficulty dealing with your injury and doesn’t know how to express it.
     
    YOUR BROTHERS BRING YOU LUNCH AND DINNER for the two months that you are in rehab. They organize a weekly calendar in which each brother is responsible for a certain time slot. You’d get the daily call from the Responsible Brother for that day.
    “What do you feel like?” asks your brother John.
    “Can I have anything I want?”
    “Anything.”
    “How about Chinese without the chopsticks?”
    “Really?”
    “Really. I can barely handle a fork, really.”
    “What kind of Chinese?”
    “Whatever is easiest for you to pick up. Just make sure you get a few