From: Phyllis.Doering@f24.n3602.z1.fidonet.org (Phyllis Doering)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: POLIO CHIT-CHAT
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:45:24 GMT
Reply-To: Phyllis.Doering@f24.n3602.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:3602/24 - ADAnet One (tm) Net, Pinson AL
X-Fidonet: Able News Conference
Originator: wtm@sheldev.shel.isc-br.com

Index Number: 24761

[This is from the AbleNews Conference]

  LS> Just asking for comments from any polio survivors/family/friends
  LS> regarding how they are coping.  LaVonne Schoneman, HOW TO COPE,
  LS> Seattle, W Washington

You ask,S How do family members cope with the disability of a
spouse?S Let me answer that by telling a little story.

Once upon a time, in a small farming village in the plains there
lived a family. This was a particularly happy family. There was
Mother and Father Farmer, their only daughter Melissa and her
husband Frank. Now Melissa was a very bright and ambitious young
woman who worked hard both in the fields and in the house to help
provide a nice home for her family.

Now over the years the land had been good to the Farmers and they
were considered most successful by their neighbors. They had plenty
to eat and a quite lovely house. They had plenty of money put away
and they really didnUt have to work as hard as they did in order to
maintain a rather high standard of living. But the Farmers were the
kind of people who just needed to keep working.

One day  Melissa Farmer became ill. The village doctor sent her to
bed and there she stayed for over two months. When finally she
started feeling better it became clear that Melissa had lost the
use of her legs. She could no longer walk. No one had any idea what
had caused this but non the less it was true.

At first her family was most concerned and supportive. The helped
her with everything they could. Father Farmer built a ramp in the
front of the house for Melissa to roll her wheel chair up and down
and Fred Farmer built special devices to help his wife get in and
out of bed and Mother Farmer took over all Melissa's duties in the
home.

But soon things began to change. Father Farmer said the ramp made
the house look funny and all the people that came by would stop and
look and stare. Fred Farmer said the devices he had built got in
his way when he got up in the morning and Mother Farmer complained
that she was working too hard.  And they all started complaining
that Melissa needed to do something about   her chores that she
hadnUt been able to do since she became ill. They said that her not
doing cost them money and made them work harder and that all she
was doing now was sitting around the house keeping the financial
records of the family and selling the produce they grew and
managing all the other interests that the family had acquired over
the years.

RYou have changed.S They said RIt isnUt right to make us change
too.S

RBut I havenUt changed,S she said RNot really. I am the person I
have always been. I just have to do things differently.S

But her family just couldnUt get used to the change in Melissa.
You see, what Melissa's family saw as Melissa was not what Melissa
was but what Melissa did, and what is more important, DID FOR THEM.
When Melissa could no longer DO FOR THEM  they no longer recognized
her as being anything more then a burden.

But they decided that  for the good of the family and for
appearances in the village they must learn to cope with the
situation. This meant that they had to sacrifice what to them was
an important aspect of their lives in order to accommodate someone
that they no longer really knew.

But you see, they NEVER knew Melissa and they were incapable of
knowing her now. Had they known her at all they would have realized
that the change in her physical condition was nothing other then
one of the inevitable changes that all people go through during
their lives and that even though this change was different from
others they were more used to it was nothing more then the
evolution of a person and would have been  an antithesis to them
that would have precipitated a change in their own lives.  In other
words, THEY WOULD HAVE GROWN.  But they didnUt. They COPED and
because of that they and Melissa and everyone around them did not
grow. They remained stagnant and dry and bitter.

Coping presupposes some negativity with which one must come to
grips . Changing is a natural and healthy way of learning and
growing and reaching maturity.

I do not Cope with my wifeUs disability. There is nothing to cope
with. she is physically different then she was when we were first
married but her disability is part of her and to say I had to learn
to cope with her disability is to say I had to learn to cope with
her which in turn raises the question,S If I have to learn to cope
with my own wife, why did I marry her in the first place.S

To say I had to learn to cope with her disability is to say that,
like the Farmer family, she can no longer DO FOR ME, so therefore
she is somehow less of a person then she was when I married her. I
would be judging her worth on how much she did FOR ME not what and
who she is as a person.

My wife has had to learn to deal with her disability. That
disability is part of what she is. For me to say that  she is some
how less then the person I married because of this disability would
be for me to reject the entire concept of change and growth.
Families, husbands and wives should always strive to grow together.
Without this growth only stagnation is possible. Change is a
catalyst for growth not something to be coped with.

CARL DOERING
 # Origin: DA GREAT CITY OF CHICAGO (94:3120/2.2)

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