It Can Always Be Worse

The first few months after my accident were a strange period of time for me as my mind cleared from the disorientation of the past events and I began to deal with the aftereffects of the damage done to my body. I had never been one to deal with doctors, medicine, or any real concern over being sick or injured. My very first broken bone(s) occurred in this accident. Suddenly I was forced to go to one medical office after another while people treated me as though I was “broken”. The fact that I couldn’t communicate very well left some people speaking to me as though I was a child.  All of this caused me at times to feel a bit frail and afflicted. I experienced an eye-opener from all of that one day while at physical therapy. I went twice weekly as an outpatient and most of the other patients that I saw working in therapy were older than I was. I think that many of them were there because of accidents around the home or the need to get their bodies moving again after a surgical procedure. It became common for me to feel as though I was one of the youngest and most battered patients there. That feeling changed after this one particular visit.

There was a young man being worked with who was perhaps nineteen or twenty years of age and starting physical therapy as an outpatient for the first day. He had been a patient in the same hospital that I had been in, but his time spent there was far longer than mine. His family was with him and they helped as the therapists questioned him for the information needed to work with him toward physical rehabilitation. It was obvious that he had experienced many severe injuries. His body functioned with very limited control and he had a large scar on the side of his head from an injury that caused some type of brain damage. His speech was not very clear and he seemed quite agitated by the whole ordeal of having to start therapy. His mother was very distressed and was trying to deal with the therapists as they attempted to establish a plan for her son. One of my therapists took a short break from working with me because she was going to be working with this young man and needed to become acquainted with him. During that time I spoke briefly with his mother and found out that he had been in a motorcycle accident. His head injury was the result of riding without a helmet. I attempted to give her words of comfort and assurance, and then my therapist came back and I resumed working.

I left therapy that day a different man. I was made to realize, or better said remember, that there will always be worse suffering in this world beyond the things that I must face or endure. This young man had suffered damage to his body and mind that seemingly eclipsed the things that I had experienced through my accident. I must point out that I have always been of the opinion that we should never attempt to minimize the suffering of one person because of a greater degree of suffering in another, and I still feel that way. We all face our own challenges in this life and each trial is uniquely important to the individual who is experiencing the given hardship. It’s just that on that day I realized that it could have been worse; far worse. And I determined to work all the harder toward my recovery with much less discontent.