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Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Life's unwritten rules

Today was a day of incremental improvements. No specific new skills, but she is doing the old ones better. She's still eating ice, saying a bit more variety at times like "ma", "ba", "ha" with difficulty; stronger control of what she has. So instead of an update, I thought I would reflect on one of life's unwritten rules.

You would think that one of the unwritten rules of life, one of the taboos that you just don't break, would be, "You don't taunt and make fun of a paralyzed woman." It turns out that this isn't true. You can make fun of a paralyzed woman and she may find it pretty funny.

If your life was full of play and teasing before a stroke (even if you had forgotten sometimes), then it will quite probably be the same after. You'd probably be surprised how funny it was to say to her, "Is it cheating to tickle the feet of a paralyzed woman?" You might not have expected to see the humor in laying out 5 short-sleeved shirts and prompting, "Point at the one you like."

But strangely enough, life is like that.