And me? I'd thought I could cope. Thought I could handle it. But my "coping mechanisms" were all types of denial, ways of avoiding having to deal with the truth. Alcohol, my "knight-in-shining-armor" posturing, most of all my facile judgments of people like my sister. I'd always believed-deep down-that I was better than her, more competent to deal with the world. Lying here, with my new arm humming softly to itself as it performed some self-diagnostic, I knew that belief for the drek that it was.