As a teenager, I was confined to a wheelchair for six weeks or so after having surgery on both feet to remove bone fragments. It took a while to learn to walk again. Then there was the time I almost blinded myself playing with cement powder: The doctors thought for more than a week that I might not regain my eyesight. (I did.) A few years ago, I broke my left humerus, resulting in a radial-nerve palsy: My left hand was in a curled-up position for more than a year, until I had corrective (and miraculous) surgery at Johns Hopkins.
I know what it’s like not to be able-bodied. When suffering from the hand problem, I called myself crippled for a while, but people didn’t like it. Perhaps I was being insensitive to their feelings.
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