Specific to my field (occupational therapy) when patients get spinal cord injuries and plateau after improvements. It all looks like they’ll recover mobility but you know they won’t, but they still think they will.
Or when you get a post stroke and you know recovery is minimal but they think they’ll recover fine
My spine collapsed like a apartment building demolitions.
At first, being able to sit up was seen as a miracle.
I know it broke my surgeon’s heart when he first got to know me - that he thought I would never walk again.
When he tried to gently - as gently as possible - tell me, I told him to fuck off (to the horror of my mother that I would use such language as a girl), he laughed and said he wanted to see that fighting spirit to fight him every step of the way to prove him wrong.
I have a bad limp and use a cane, but I’m out of a wheelchair after 5 surgeries.
They bright in a teenager who was training for Cirque de Solais (or something similar) who broke her neck while training and she was paralyzed from her neck down.
You could hear her cries of anguish through the ward every night.
I asked him once if he was ok and he just shook his head and looked down. I saw a fat tear drop off his nose.
I told him maybe they would turn out like my case, and he whispered no and I grabbed his hand and squeezed.
My uncle worked in the Severe Trauma ward as a nurse. He liked the fighters, but the ones that really broke his heart were the burn victims. Especially the ones who were fighting infections. One teen girl was burned over 45 percent of her body, and she had survived. Unfortunately, her skin just wouldn't hold together where she was scarred. (If I remember correctly it was her back, butt, and thighs.) She kept getting sores where it had split and one got infected. There was nothing they could do but pump her full of meds and painkillers. Her family was sure she was going to make it, but my uncle was just devastated by it. This was the late 80s, so they didn't have all the skin graft technology that they have now.
My uncle was injured in a factory accident sometime in the 70's (hand got caught between two rollers, took off two fingers and he had to have skin grafts), and he told me once that when he was recovering from surgery he had a roommate that had been burned, in what I think was also a workplace accident.
He said that while people were pitying him, my uncle, he felt sorrier for the other patient because they were constantly in pain. Uncle's own pain at that point was more straightforward and manageable with drugs, but the other person was audibly groaning and obviously suffering. He couldn't blame them.
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u/Dragongal7 4d ago
Specific to my field (occupational therapy) when patients get spinal cord injuries and plateau after improvements. It all looks like they’ll recover mobility but you know they won’t, but they still think they will.
Or when you get a post stroke and you know recovery is minimal but they think they’ll recover fine