First, let me say that I am not on a morbid kick.
It’s just that when I watched the Ram Dass documentary I wrote about in my previous post, at the end of it, Netflix recommended another short documentary – about 40 minutes – called “End Game” exploring end of life care, that was filmed in San Francisco. Since I worked as a hospice nurse for a long time during my nursing career, I decided to watch it also.
And I was meant to see this documentary. It was a God thing.
While I am already familiar with hospice care and the things patients and families go through, the film introduced me to this fantastic facility:
And one of their physicians, Dr. B.J. Miller, who is himself disabled and a triple amputee (he only has his left arm remaining) from an accident in college, was speaking to volunteer orientees about his disability when he said something that I so so needed to hear:
In my own experience, it took me several years before I stopped comparing my new body to the old body. But when I did stop comparing — when this became the whole me, not me missing stuff, I stopped suffering. My identity had accommodated the facts of my life. So, I like thinking about suffering as a gap. Like a wedge. The gap between the world you want and the world you got. You know, that to me, sort of sums it up very nicely.
Holy shit, y’all. YES.
There is no comparison between the “RA me” now and the “healthy me” of old.
And I can do things to make myself  better – and I am doing them – but I don’t even need to consider my “before RA” body. That isn’t even on the table.
This is the whole me now. I am complete as is – and I will move onward with what I have.
Acceptance is the key.
Forward, always forward.
Be well, everybody.
Grace and blessings.
the autoimmune hippie. 