Me and My Hook…
This is me as a new born – a little surprise. My parents had waited for me longer than 9 months. Due to various complications they had to go through fertility treatment to eventually fall pregnant with me after 3 years. Scans didn’t show anything untoward and my mum had a healthy pregnancy.
the moment I was born I was whisked away from my parents and taken to the neonatal ward where I would stay for several days before being released to my parents. They were concerned that I may have other less visible disabilities so did various tests during this time. My parents were told all seemed well but that my prognosis was not too bright as an individual with one arm; would I develop normally? would I hit the normal developmental milestones as a baby? They couldn’t say…
Despite this my mum was determined that I would not live a life of “cant’s”. I visited Roehampton hospital at the age of 7months old and received my first prosthetic. (I still have this and it looks like a dolls arm!) I used to love my visits to my ‘special hospital’ but not so much the prosthetic I came home with. I enjoyed being around other children with limb differences and felt less ‘different’ when I was playing there. The prosthetics on the other hand…excuse the pun… were less than ideal for a very young child. They were heavy and always felt disproportionate to your body. To open and close the ‘grip’ in the hand you either had to use brute force to open or I was wrapped in pulley style cables meaning that if I reached my arm out the hand/hook would open.
This is not to say that I’m not grateful for all that the NHS tried to do for me. It was the early 90’s (that makes me feel old!) and they were doing the best they could with the current technology and materials.
And there is no denying I had some fun with these prosthetics over the years! There are many stories of my walking around with a ‘limp’ forearm hanging off my shoulder in a coat as I walk down the local high-street. Or deciding that im over wearing my arm out in public so whipping it off and promptly handing it over to my mum for her to put in her handbag while onlookers tried to process the situation.
As you can imagine I was a determined child, mostly determined to get away with not wearing my prosthetic! After a while my parents learnt not to push it and I would dabble with using it to do tasks now and again. These attempts would usually result in my taking it off and completing task in half the time without it. So by the time I started school I had established that life was significantly easier without a “fake arm”. The arm I was born with was adequate so why would I use it? just to blend in? I was not up for ‘blending’ at that time. Like most children I had a very healthy self-image at this point. i have no significant memories about starting school surrounding my arm. My childhood was relatively normal throughout primary school.
Again I am in no way ungrateful for the well-meaning attempts by the hospital staff nor am I saying that prosthetics don’t have a place in peoples lives. But this was my experience. Tried and tested.
IAmPossible Mama 