It's All Relatives

Yo!

I hope all my crippled comrades are having a good week thus far. I'm still rather tired and sore, but otherwise I'm good. Over the past two days I was finally able to spend time with the piggies. Maggie is still sad so I tried having VERY supervised play dates with members of the trio. First I brought out Nellie because she is usually beyond docile. Turns out Nellie hates Maggie, she bit her in the butt several times. Then I tried Mama Pig cause she's getting older, and older pigs generally don't care as much. It went better than Nellie's play date. As long as they weren't looking at each other they were civil, they even snuggled. Maybe I'll try to introduce her to the trio... it would take an insane amount of space and salad, but it could possibly work.

Moving on, here's a little question that was asked during Cripplefest. "How has being disabled effected your family?" Of course it had a huge effect on my immediate family and I'll probs go into greater detail about that one day, but interestingly enough a whoooooolllleeeeee mess of cripples had the same answer when it came to their extended families. Damn near everyone said "At first everyone was very supportive and helpful, but they stopped caring eventually." This was definitely true for me. When I had my first surgery with the massive complications, everyone and their mother sent me cards, cookies, etc. It meant a lot to my little 10 year old self to know that people cared about me. But as time went on I got fewer calls, fewer cards, everything. Most of my relatives stopped sending cards after my third surgery. It was very discouraging because while most of my relatives were numb to my pain, I most certainly was not. It felt like I was alone and everyone had forgotten about me. I was one of the lucky cripples because I have a handful of relatives that, ya know, actually sent cards and helped us out when needed. Seeing our support system fade has surely been rough, but as they were numb to me I am now numb to them. Come September I don't expect a lot of cards from my family, but that's ok, I don't need them. I know that they all still love me, they just have a funny way of showing it sometimes...

Crippie's Tippie - General rule of thumb, if someone you know is having surgery or some other really crappy thing, be nice and acknowledge it...whether it's a card, facebook post, whatever, just let 'em know that you care.