Rolling with the Chickens

My routine is far from ordinary, but I roll with it. To be fair, ordinary things happen to me every day along with the extraordinary. I have human nurses who laugh and act and get lightheaded like normal people. Monday morning the nursing student got lightheaded when he was trying to draw blood from my arm. The poor kid had to have his own blood pressure and blood sugar taken as he laid on the floor next to my open balcony door with his feet propped up on a chair.
"I'm so sorry," he kept apologizing.
I just laughed, "I'm glad to know nurses are people too."
After making sure Benedikt was okay, another nurse pricked my vein, pulled my blood, and barely left a stain in my skin; however, I like looking at the bruise from Benedikt's unfinished attempt and smiling at how somethings aren't perfect, but that's what being human is about.

These wonderful nurses treat me like a human too and laugh at my American accent. The French nurses have taught me a catch phrase that I repeat to each of them throughout the day that means something along the lines of "rolling my chicken" or "it rolls with my chicken." The response has something to do with the rooster coming to the chicken or with the chicken. Catch phrases never make sense when you take them literally, so I refrain from trying to translate everything I learn literally. Every time I wheel by Martine, she points and waits for me to shout some nonsense in French, and any French speaker nearby gets a good laugh at my poor French pronunciation before completing the sentence.

Another ordinary of my routine is my rapport with Alex, my incredible physical therapist. Her sarcasm is a perfect match for mine, and I had a great time when she met Sandra today and jumped right into teasing her. She really is an incredible encouragement to me when I psych myself up for standing by saying, "I can do this," to which Alex always responds deadpan, "Of course you can." Her confidence in me is a huge motivator in my workout sessions once or twice a day with her. I also like her jokes about how PTs just like to hug people. Today, as she hugged my hips to keep me from falling, she advised me never to date a PT because he would just want to hug me all the time.

This week has also had it's share of extraordinary moments as I had three days in a row with visits from my extraordinary students. I can't stress enough how much I miss my kids. I used to tell them I loved Mondays because it meant I got to see them after a whole two day break from their beautiful faces - imagine my agony after nearly three months! I love these kids with all my heart, and it was such a blessing to my soul to have some of them come visit me and tell me that they missed me too.

It's a strange place I find myself in, but I'll keep rolling with it embracing the ordinary among the extraordinary. My body is still confused about bathroom business, so please pray that it will quickly sort things out, but praise God the infection's been treated and tremors are decreasing (spasms are still frequent). The new biggest prayer request is that the insurance would quickly approve my new custom shoe inserts. They make walking possible, but the first request for approval was denied with the reasoning, why should she need inserts when we approved a wheelchair which costs less than these special pieces of plastic. The sooner I can get these, the greater are my chances of ever walking again (without a PT hugging me).