My home 20 years ago

20 years ago I spent 11 weeks hospitalized: From Labor Day (September 7th) unto Thanksgiving (November 25th). Nine of those weeks were at the renowned Craig Hospital. I don't actually think about those times much, but for 20 years I have participated in Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique -- “CHART” (Craig's long term disability research). Tonight is my night to be interviewed by a Craig Hospital researcher! And memories of 20 years flood back!

Memories:

1. Friends met
   
2. Bible studies in the chapel
   
3. "Wheelchair class"
   
4. Learning to transfer from bed to wheelchair ... floor to wheelchair ... etc.
   
5. Learning to dress myself & tie my shoes (I still struggle with tieing my left shoe! Something about the weakness in the left hand!)
   
6. Pool therapy and "walking" for the first time standing chest deep in water.
   
7. The food I loved there (every day the kitchen would make me pancakes and fried egg) and food hated (Ratatouille)
   
8. Kathee driving our old beat up '68 VW bug to the hospital every day. Meeting me after lunch and staying until after dinner. On warm evenings, parking my wheelchair on the patio and watching Kathee drive past me on the way home!
   
9. The woman (name forgotten) who lost her unborn baby. She had broken her back in an ATV accident.
   
10. Lenny being told he would be a quadriplegic the rest of his life. He broke his neck in a train accident. His fiance was uninjured! Lenny was my roommate for more than a month. Sadly Lenny died several short years later!
    
11. The subluxation of my spinal fusion and facing surgery again (wouldn't happen until January 1988).
    

Craig was my home for 9 of those 11 weeks. I thank God for enabling me to be there and caring for me through those Doctors, nurses, and caregivers!