2019-08-15
21 分钟Modern.
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Produced by the Ilab at WBUR Boston.
From the New York Times and WBUR Boston.
This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption.
I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti.
This week's essayist Lange Martine Junior believes he lives a charmed life, but one night in Virginia 25 years ago, that belief was tested.
Lange writes about what happened that night and afterward in his essay.
It's read by Nikolaj Koster Waldau.
Nikolay has just been nominated for an Emmy award for outstanding supporting actor in a drama Series for playing Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones.
My wife and I were in a motel in Roanoke, Virginia, on our way home from three months at the Hershey Medical center in Pennsylvania, where she had been recovering after being crippled in a car accident.
It was our first night away from the skill and comfort of the nurses we had come to depend on.
And so far, so good.
Then we woke up and smelled something.
It smelled like a bowel movement.
I lifted up the sheets.
It was a bowel movement and it was in our bed.
We knew we had a lot to learn, but we had no idea how much hearing the word paraplegic had made us focus on the big thing, the fact that Linda could no longer walk.
Less anticipated were the smaller humiliations and inconveniences like bowel movements in bed or on the way to a party, sores that came out of nowhere and took months or years to heal, and inaccessible restroom stalls that caused Linda to have to catheterize herself in the public area where people were washing their hands and talking.
And on it went the list of indignities.