I wasn't quite sure what to title this one...
There is that old saying/adage that to some effect says that you know who your friends are when you are at your lowest. I have some awesome friends. I have learned the validity of that saying many times over in the last bit of time.
What I didn't realize, and know a lot of people probably don't realize, is that we start to dismiss people when they are recovering. We see them get to a certain point and seem to say "ah they can take it from here." The friends I have kept in my life haven't.
Something else I also realized is that healing comes in phases and hills and valleys.
You have the very first phase, the one when you have a health care team working to get you healed ... to a certain point. That point is the point in which further contact is not needed, because you are at a point in which you have reached maximum possible recovery based on their medical standards. Most health care providers will happily see you past this point, but are also willing to not see you.
Then you have the second phase, it is still quite obvious there is something not quite right here and you need help. This is probably the easiest phase, ironically. Here you are healed enough that you can pretty much function on your own, but not quite and it is obvious. This phase is easiest because you can function on your own and others constantly ask or volunteer to help because it is still obvious that you need help. Also typically by the time you get to this phase the injury is still fresh and new in everyone's minds, your support network isn't tired yet.
The next phase, which is where I am now I think, you pretty much can appear "normal" with some slight aberrations or abnormalities, but this differences are with in what people consider acceptable. So for the most part people forget that you do have non normal limits, some of this is also my fault in that I do not like to show how difficult some things are for me.
It is this last phase that I think is where people get stuck and where those outside the experience of the injured often apply negative labels. It would be easy to get stuck here, as an injured person, because I have most of my ability to function normally back and can either think my way around the rest or have the means to pay for someone to do it.
