I’ve been remiss of late in being faithful to this blog.

Those of you who are longtime readers know this isn’t the end of it by any means. It’s more that I’ve been trying to figure out a new direction for this place—something beyond the constant grief that has poured out here over the past three years.

And to be fair, there has been a hell of a lot of grief to unpack.

Loss of family. Loss of livelihood. Loss of a substance-free lifestyle. Loss of health. Loss of a viable occupation.

Loss, loss, loss.

At some point, even the Wasteland starts running out of storage space.

It has been a lot to unpack, and those losses still affect my day-to-day functioning in one way or another. When everything happened three years ago, I expected the life that eventually emerged from it to look very different from the one I’m living now.

I also know that I’m responsible for my own destiny and for many of the choices I’ve made along the way—obviously excluding the deaths and other things over which I had absolutely no control.

In the Wasteland, you eventually have to confront things as they are. I think that’s one of its greatest lessons. Your ego gets stripped raw. You have to decide what kind of person you’re going to rebuild yourself into, and somewhere along the way, you also have to learn to grant yourself a little grace.

We do what we need to do to protect ourselves. We listen to other people. We adapt. And, quite honestly, we should still follow sound medical advice.

Unfortunately, unlike Fallout, most health problems cannot be solved by jabbing yourself in the chest with a Stimpack.

There have been plenty of times over the past few years when I really wished one would work. It would make a hell of a lot more sense than having to adapt my entire life to a new situation instead of magically curing it.

So, What Does Disabled Look Like?

As many readers know, I’ve had multiple strokes. As near as the doctors can determine, they occurred over roughly a year before I finally learned what was happening when a stroke was discovered during an MRI.

The other day, someone walked up to me and told me:

“You don’t look disabled.”

That raises an interesting question.

What exactly does disabled look like?

Is there some sort of badge we’re supposed to wear on our chests? Perhaps a flashing sign? Do I need to periodically fall over in the parking lot to demonstrate that the handicap placard hanging from my mirror is legitimate?

Or—and I’m just throwing this radical concept out there—could people mind their own damn business?

I have a handicap placard because I have difficulty walking more than about a hundred feet without assistance. I have a service dog who helps mitigate both physical and psychological disabilities. And on some days, I appear perfectly “normal.”

Whatever normal means.

I’ve always thought normal was a setting on the washing machine.

Disability doesn’t always announce itself. It doesn’t always require a wheelchair, a cane, a missing limb, or some other outward sign that satisfies a stranger’s personal definition of disabled.

If you’re the kind of person who analyzes strangers to determine whether their disability meets your standards, I have one word for you:

Stop.

Knowing the Medicine Is Not the Same as Living It

I’ve written before about how having the deficits I have now would have changed the way I cared for patients when I was practicing.

It is one thing to sit across from someone and explain adaptive behaviors. It is another thing entirely to understand what living with those adaptations actually feels like.

I could explain to a patient that they might need to stand up more slowly. I could explain fall precautions, medication changes, assistive devices, fatigue, rehabilitation, and a dozen other things.

What I didn’t truly understand was how exhausting it can be when things you have done automatically for your entire life suddenly require conscious thought.

I think I would say it differently now.

I can paint you a rosy picture, but the truth is that some illnesses and injuries can radically change how you function as a human being. They can also change how other human beings treat you.

That doesn’t mean life is over. It doesn’t mean adaptation is impossible. But I think patients deserve honesty about what adaptation actually means.

And maybe that’s where this blog goes next.

I spent years accumulating medical knowledge as a paramedic, nurse, and nurse practitioner. Now I have something I didn’t have then: firsthand knowledge of what it feels like when your brain and body stop cooperating with the life you had planned.

I don’t want to abandon everything I’ve written about grief, trauma, loss, or the other things that brought us here. They’re part of the Wasteland too.

But perhaps there’s room for something else.

I want to combine experience with medical knowledge—not simply explain what happens inside the body, but talk about what happens to the person who has to live in that body afterward.

Because I spent years knowing what disability was.

It turns out I had a hell of a lot left to learn about what disabled actually looks like.

Your dog and your mom know what it looks like, and they still love you