I have spent the last 2 weeks in plaster.
Being put in plaster in never fun. Having your right hand put in plaster and being told you can't drive when you have four Moglets to ferry hither and thither is a logistical nightmare. To put it mildly. Luckily I had a whole host of friends and family to help me out and life continued.
And the plaster gave me insight. A surprising insight to the world of my Moglet #2. Because suddenly everything was taking much more effort. Washing my hair one handed, with the plaster cast swathed in a bin bag and hanging out the shower, was frustrating, and time consuming. My hair never felt properly clean. Drying it with my left hand meant I couldn't some how style it at the back. It kinked and curled and didn't feel right. It made me grumpy.
Putting on make-up was a whole new adventure. Mascara took on a life of its own, Alice Cooper eat your heart out!! The first morning I stabbed my self in the eye repeatedly until I screamed and gave up. It made me angry.
Buttons were impossible! Due to nature of my injury my thumb was plastered out at a r angle, so using my thumb to fed the button through its slot was not an option. Believe me you don't realise how much you use your thumb until you can't. I had to ask my Moglets and Moglet Daddy to help me dress. I hated it. I lost my independence and I didn't like it! It made me frustrated.
Making the dinner was possible but it took so much longer. Peeling potatoes was actually impossible, we ate a lot of rice and Jacket Potatoes! I fell back in love with my slow cooker and adopted the 'bunge it all in with one hand and pray' approach to meals.
I could still make simple cakes if I used the mixer. But getting the batter into the tins was another matter! It was slow, and messy. Very messy! A job that should have taken 2 minutes took 5 times as long and the kitchen looked like a war zone ! And the end result was usually lopsided and not up to my normal standard. A bit embarrassing really.
And the amount of extra effort I was putting in was tiring. It was tiring physically but also emotionally. Not being able to do simple things wasn't good for my self esteem.
And being tired made me clumsy. Come to think of it just having the plaster made me clumsy. I was misjudging distances left, right and centre. Reaching for a spoon I would knock over a cup, I couldn't cut up food without it shooting across the plate.
Angry, frustrated, embarrassed, grumpy, tired all ways round, low self esteem. Any of it sound familiar?
It dawned on me part way through the whole experience that the extra effort I was putting in, the physical struggles with every day tasks, my own frustration at my body not cooperating, was very similar to the day to day experiences of my Moglet #2.
Everyday he finds simple things that we take for granted hard. Everyday he is more tired than we would expect him to be, simply because he is concentrating harder on getting his body to behave. Everyday he is trying to judge distances most of us aren't even aware of.
My experience gave me just a little glimpse of what it was like to be Moglet #2. I was able to see, rather than read about, why sometimes he is frustrated and angry. I experienced first hand how easy it is for his self esteem to dip when things don't go according to plan. Even the annoying itch right in the middle of the cast taught me things. Imagine having an itch that you can't scratch away? That is exactly what Moglet #2 says his skin feels like when his Sensory Processing Disorder goes into over drive.
The cast is off and things are slowly returning to normal! Next week, in our busy lives it will probably be but a distant memory. But I hope I don't forget what it taught me. I hope those insights stay.