Stuck

Do you know what it is like to really be stuck? Helpless, unable to get yourself out of a place or a situation ? I want to write a book about my husband and I'm going to title it Stuck....because that word sums up so much of his life. Not always in a bad way, sometimes it was good, but often it was difficult and ultimately it was the cause of his death. I hadn't looked at David's perspective of life from that point of view of being stuck until I told my son about the way David died.

Jason (also known as Boddhi) had a close bond with Da. That is what my kids called David...Da, sort of a cross between Dad and David. David was their step-father, my second husband. He never had any children of his own and was thrilled to have a ready made family. He was there for the births of our first two grandchildren and truly felt that he was their Papa.

Anyway, back to being stuck. David had polio as a child. He was not quite 5 when he contracted polio, it affected him from head to toe. David spent an entire year in an iron lung. He was stuck in that contraption and was only allowed to view his parents through a window. At that time polio was considered very contagious and anyone with polio was put in quarantine. The only people allowed to touch a polio victim was a nurse or doctor. They would change their clothes and scrub themselves before leaving the room. And a little 5 year old kid would just gaze at them from a machine that breathed for him. I can't even imagine the terror and loneliness that must have been for that little boy. But David survived. Eventually he was able to breathe on his own. All the therapy that he received had gone to his upper body, to enable him to breathe, to use his arms. After a year, his little legs were atrophied beyond help. He would never stand or walk on his again.
To be continued...............