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AN OPEN MIND
I’m one of the world’s worst patients. I don’t do ‘ill’ or ‘injured’ at all well.
Some people, such as my girlfriend Tracie, are of sturdy stock. She’ll breeze through a head cold, work through flu (although she rarely gets either) and is ‘downed’ only by major operations or nasty tooth infections (again fortunately she hasn’t had to undergo many of these in recent years). Even then she utilises the power of positive thinking and while she has her grumpy moments, she doesn’t moan nearly as much as me.
I am of the ilk that ‘awfulises’: headache equals brain tumour; tummy bug means I’ve likely got cancer; a sneeze is surely a sign of viral meningitis (on a good day) or ebola (on a bad day). Me and my kind are the sort who should not be allowed near a medical dictionary. While looking up treatments for a verruca we can’t help but stop and read about all the other illnesses and conditions in the book, convincing ourselves we have the symptoms of everything from adenomatous colon polyps to rabies. By the time we’ve finished, if we weren’t ill to begin with, we sure as hell are now.
So, almost three months into a shoulder injury that has forced me to cut back drastically on my computer use, I am at the point where I believe my arm is going to drop off and my whole body is going to disintegrate piece by piece and topple down like the twin towers. As I was relating my neuroses to Tracie this week, she directed me to the Sydney Morning Herald website and a story about a baby born in Bangladesh with two heads. “And you think you’ve got problems,” she quipped.
She was right of course. There’s nothing like a photo of a two-headed bub to put your own melodrama into perspective. Aside from the back and neck problems the kid’s bound to have if he lives, there’s also the ‘freak’ factor he’ll have to contend with. Will he be ostracised from the community, hidden and locked away by his family like the disabled siblings in Palestine for over 40 years, as reported in the The Brisbane Times, for being ‘different’?
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths people will go to reject anyone who shows signs of being other than what is considered ‘normal’. Whether it’s race, gender expression, sexuality or the fact someone is differently abled, we panic and apply an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ policy. I’m not immune from this myself either. Any semblance of political correctness went right out the window earlier this week when, with my shoulder hurting more than ever, I yelled, ‘I’ll be disabled! I can’t cope with being disabled!’
We can all benefit from ‘diversity training’, opening our minds and enjoying each other’s differences – from your granny’s glass eye to your ex-girlfriend’s tail. It takes all sorts to make a world. Just don’t sneeze on me.
Katrina Fox
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