After a car crash confined me to a wheelchair for months, I assumed relearning how to walk would be the biggest challenge. I was wrong\u2014the true struggle came when I discovered how much my husband believed my care was worth.I\u2019m a 35-year-old woman, and before the accident, I was the glue holding my marriage together.I covered most of our expenses.I cooked. I cleaned.I managed every appointment, every phone call, every moment of \u201cCan you just handle this, babe? I\u2019m bad with paperwork.\u201dWhenever my husband wanted to change jobs or \u201ctake a break and figure things out,\u201d I sat down with spreadsheets and made it possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I worked extra hours. I encouraged him. I never kept track of who gave more. I believed marriage was about teamwork and that things would balance out in time.We\u2019d been together for ten years. I truly believed our relationship was strong.I don\u2019t remember the crash itself\u2014just a green traffic light, then a hospital ceiling.I survived, but my legs didn\u2019t recover easily. They weren\u2019t permanently paralyzed, but they were weak enough that I needed a wheelchair. The doctors were hopeful.\u201cSix to nine months of physical therapy,\u201d they said. \u201cYou\u2019ll need a lot of help at first. Transfers. Bathing. Getting around. No weight-bearing on your own for a while.\u201dI\u2019ve always been self-sufficient. I was the one who helped others, not the one who needed help. Still, part of me hoped this experience might bring us closer. When my father was injured when I was young, my mother cared for him for months without resentment. They joked. They were gentle. That\u2019s what love looked like to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a car crash confined me to a wheelchair for months, I assumed relearning how to walk would be the biggest challenge. I was wrong\u2014the true struggle… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":284,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32654,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32652\/revisions\/32654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}