Yesterday I was lying on my face on the acupuncture table, with about 25 needles in me, listening to the lady in the next cubicle talk very loudly about her accident. She was trying to convince herself that her recent car accident had only caused muscle injury. "I'm so worried there will be nerve damage," she said, "and I'll be paralyzed." I said to my acupuncturist's assistant, "I've been paralyzed. It isn't the end of the world."

Then I was thinking, though, while I'm glad to be alive, at times I have been convinced that it's better to be dead than disabled. I don't mean to be morbid about it, but when I was a hemiplegic, people treated me like I was simpled-minded, even the therapists. I understand so clearly now what it's like to grow old and have people treat you like you have no brain anymore, just because your body is deteriorating. I was the same old me, just inside a nonfunctional body.