The Thrill of Accomplishment

Most days I'm ambivalent about having CP. It makes life hard, but I've nerver known any different. Besides, everyone has a hard life in one way or another. I don't have the market corned on hardship by any means.

Today I am grateful for CP. It gives me the chance to be immensley proud of myself multiple times a week. I get to feel the thrill of accomplishment when I manage to do something I either thought was impossible or that I had thought too hard to keep trying. The moments of pure joy are found in unlikely places. The come from doing things most would consider mundane. When I successfully fish my glasses out from behind my bed, I have a small party. When I finally master making peanut butter and jelly with one hand, there is a victory parade. When I am able to make my bed, including the bottom sheet, I shout it from the rooftops. I don't care that it took an hour and three brooms to extricate my glasses, or that there's peanut all over my kitchen and myself. The point is I did it by myself.

Today I got to experience this feeling three times in the space of an hour. All I did was take a shower. This was my first independant shower using a cool new bath chair that my mad-inventor dad built. It uses an air compressor and a piston to magically get my legs over the edge of my bathtub and an air bag to raise the seat up high enough. It is awesome. I've been crunched for time to actually use it between working full time and being tethered to TPN for 18 hours  a day. Today, I had some free time at lunch and have been craving a real shower. I went for it. It was glorious. I transfered to the seat, pushed myself back, clicked my seatbelt and flipped the switch that slowly drew me over  the middle of the tub.I flipped the second switch that slowly inflated the airbag under the seat so that when I used my body to turn the seat, my feet would clear the edge of the tub. Then I donned the plastic sleeve that protects my PICC line site, and went to town. When I was done, I reversed the process, feeling as though I had stuck the landing in an Olympic vault as my feet lightly brushed the floor.

So thank you, broken brain for making me feel like a little kid again.