“Who Would Marry a Quadriplegic?” – ryan

It had started as a typical work day for me at a hospital home health agency. I heard it from across the staff meeting room as I was preparing to head out into the field to see patients . . . “Who would marry a quadriplegic?”

I faced the wall in a cubicle, working with my laptop. Without glancing over to look, I knew that voice. She was an occupational therapist I knew casually. I drew a short breath and sensed that a co-worker who knew me must be frantically signaling that I was within earshot. An awkward silence followed as everyone else absorbed what had just happened.

I had never been shy about being married to a man who is a quadriplegic, but I didn’t shout it from the rooftops either. The speaker must have been unaware of any details about my life because we weren’t friends, and she could likely have been talking about any number of our patients who happened to be quadriplegics. I’m sure she hadn’t thought about how her words might land that morning for someone like me.

I’m thankful for the friend who cued the speaker to cut her conversation short, but unease still hung in the air. I felt it in the glances in the hall when we all cleared out to see patients. I had just been reminded of a sad fact: even people who devote themselves to helping people who are struggling through disability and limitations have prejudicial perceptions of others’ abilities, desirability, and worthiness. It’s part of being human.

My mind immediately went to Bruce, my husband, working full-time as a network security engineer for the state. I thought about how proud I was of him and his relentless determination that initially attracted me to him. I asked myself . . . so why did I marry the guy in the wheelchair?

The one I knew well after dating for five years, thinking yes and then no and then maybe and then yes again. I was not naive to the struggles that might come, and any thinking person had to consider the possibilities when contemplating marriage.

Family and friends (including an ex-boyfriend and an ex-husband) cautioned me. Some had reasonable objections. All meant well. Most based their thoughts on appearances because that was all they knew. They didn’t think it could work out. But they couldn’t see past the obvious disability.

They didn’t know how the guy in the wheelchair handled stares and assumptions whenever he ventured out. They weren’t there when I accompanied him to doctor appointments and how providers excluded Bruce, the patient, from the conversation even to the extent of ignoring his thoughtful queries! Clerks at the store took one look at him in the chair and seemed to assume he was mentally impaired. Bruce’s kind and humorous handling of these situations helped me see past the way we often miss the mark in our interactions with the disabled population.

In Bruce, I saw someone who did not accept the first reality of a provider’s assessment and recommended plan of care but instead created his own.

I saw him task his compromised body to do more every day, adjusting medications and routines until he could do all the things he wanted to do—marry and have a family and his own home instead of living in a facility.

I saw how grueling life can be for him—to rise from bed and get out the door to work can be far more gnarly than I’d imagined. It was astonishing that he would still choose to work under these circumstances when he could have stayed home and still received compensation.

I watched him conduct himself with a prevailing sense of humor, rather than with a grudge against anyone who could get up, use the toilet, shower, and dress on their own.

I saw the one who has lived with a daunting level of multi-system dysfunction for decades and still forges on. One who has accomplished so much after experiencing a catastrophic disability two weeks after his 18th birthday.

And I have marveled with him, for 27 years now, at how ungrateful we can be in the midst of so many blessings, and how we often quit too easily instead of trying again another way.

I saw the one in a million, and I wanted him by my side—the one in a million for me. So in the end, I know why I married a quadriplegic. It’s really very simple. It’s something called love.