when a little means a lot

I'm a Joe Bennett fan. Always have been, although I haven't read him recently. That is, until I got up to write this post.

My homepage is www.stuff.co.nz world news but sometimes I read other bits of stuff. And this morning, (it is 1.29 am as I type this, after a day in the garden I had an early night...) I read Joe Bennett on kindness, and in it he mentions hope.

OK, in the morning light, as I edit this post, the link is tenuous. But in the night I read it as something that was meant to be. Hope, and the world being the right way up.

You see, the post I wanted to write enough to get out of bed at 1am for was about "if you believe you can, or you can't, you are right". That involves hope. And much much more.

Yesterday a friend explained to me how he had learned to walk, and to urinate, having been told he would never do either of those things again. He said despite his determination he was not making progress with urinating until he bought a pig's bladder, complete with all its parts, and studied how the muscles worked. It was a matter of teaching some muscles to relax while the others contracted. Once he understood, he could learn.

I wont share more of his story as I haven't asked if I may, but I can tell you mine to illustrate the point I want to make.

At the age of 15 I started having regular traction on my spine. When I was 18 I was told that I would be in a wheelchair at 40. I was in such pain that I believed the prognosis. Despite my high pain threshold and doing all the "right things", keeping my weight down, exercising, doing corrective exercises, I was still in a huge amount of pain. Regular checks simply confirmed the prognosis. When the degeneration was bad enough, (when I got to about 96 on a scale of 100 I think it was) I could have an operation to freeze my movement. I was only at about 85.

My four children are close in age because of that looming wheelchair. There were even times I daren't hold a child, I had to be seated and have the child given to me. But mostly, I held back the pain and coped. Then something wonderful, something life-changing happened to me.

I was told of a physiotherapist who specialised in problem backs. She didn't have room for me but she squeezed me in to her already full case load. She talked to me about my life. She showed me films. She gave me things to read. She educated me. She explained what I was doing to my spine, and how to correct this. Through her, I understood, and could learn.

The male experts had looked at my xrays and said "you will be in a wheelchair at 40" and "you just have to accept that you can't make a bed, you can't do this, you can't do that...". The woman had asked me about myself and said "You will be doing.... Afterwards, you must.... to compensate". She understood me, and gave me hope. I understood her, and I believed I could.

I had a wonderful example to follow, when the going was tough. Two men came back from the war with identical amputations. Both were told they would never walk again. One believed his doctors. The other danced, played tennis, trained horses. He was my father-in-law. When he stayed with us it was my job to disguise his "work leg" for transport on the plane as he wore his "good leg" home.

How could I contemplate a wheelchair, when he had rejected his?

I think of two students from long ago who lead interesting international lives, both holding university degrees. Their early academic records would suggest they should never have attempted university study. Both believed they could do it. So they did.

Four little letters, h o p e. That's where we start. Combine it with belief, add education. How precious, how empowering, it is.