United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hi everyone, I live in Detroit, Michigan. OBPI in right arm. I did not ask for this condition, and I wonder to myself why me? As I read through entries, I realize I am not alone. However,I have never received any emotional support from family and be ridiculed from so called friends and I know that I am emotionally damaged. I now know that OBPI individual need both physical and mental therapy. Please respond I continue to need understanding and support.

Mickey u r not alone, there are many people around the world who has gone through this, My husband is one of that, and he also think the same way....why me????
But we as a family give him moral support,physical help... though we cannot do a whole lot for his pain, but we all are always with him no matter what!!
I am sorry to hear that ur family has nver supported you emotionally!
But u r more than welcome to communicate with us!
Thanks,
Shafali.

Hi Mickey,

I totally understand your struggles, as I think most of us here do. I know that you feel so alone, until I found this message board, I did too. And you are very right, people can be downright nasty. What I have discovered myself, is that if you decide to let it get the best of you, it will. Do you have kids? I find that my kids are the best boost for my self-esteem. They will out of the blue tell me how amazed they are at the things that I do. Sometimes the simplest things are the biggest boost to a person's ego.

Trust me when I say that these boards will help. I was so motivated to help myself after just reading a few posts here - just to know that I am not alone!

Please feel free to email me at anytime, because I would love to chat with you or anyone else. My email is Idaho4pack@aol.com, and it is open to anyone at all!

Good luck, Mickey, and hang in there. You now know where to find the support you need to start moving in a forward direction!

Shelly

Mickey
You will find so much support and comfort from this message board.
When I first found the board I was so happy to find 4 others with this injury.
Now there are many more adults and we all share a common experience.

I personally went through a grieving process.
I did not realize it until I was almost finished with it.
I know all the steps of grief but did not realize I was entitled to grieve my own losses.
I was always told how lucky I was to move at all and to be alive that I never complained.
I guess I felt guilty because others were worse off than I am.
While going through this process I discovered something... the injury you live with is the worst injury.
We have to deal with frustration long before we are mature enough to cope with it.
A few years ago one of the parents asked me what I lost with bpi injury.
I typed a very long response and during the course of writing it I realized I had gained a great deal because I was injured.

We do things differently and our pain issues can be hard to deal with sometimes.
We must also accept the fact that overuse and secondary injuries will be part of our life.

Now you have a place to get information to vent and share your feelings.
I know I had so many mixed emotions after I found UBPN.
It was the first time I could speak freely about my arm and there were others who understood.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions
Kath

KathM@ubpn.org
BrachialPlexus1@aol.com

Yeah...I think I'm emotionally frigged-up, but not necessarily in a bad way. What I mean is, I'm O.K. and everything. I don't have a "twitch", ya' know what I'm sayin'. I do have an extremely bad temper, but it took years of therapy to get me to understand that. For years I'm sure people just thought I was an a**hole.
Once you've decided to go beyond this injury, you have to make a mental and a physical effort, and that takes alot of concentration...that's just speakin' for myself.
My personallity is black and white,ya' know, either on or off, very intense.
Now this is straight from therapy. It all stems from the way I was raised. My parents never let me except failure, if I didn't try, now if I tried and failed that was cool. If I said, "I can't because of my arm.", I would be punished because that was using my injury as an excuse.
I grew up not knowin' what was wrong, no one had ever heard of Erb's Palsy so people just treated me as some kind of freak. There was a time when my Mom tried to put me in kindergarten. The teachers were so nice that they wouldn't let me play, eat or take my nap with the other kids.
So yeah, emotional damage is just part of life, I kinda dig it.

Hi Steve
I am so glad to see you posted hope things are going well for you.
It is so true we do get scars from some of the bad experiences.
I guess I never thought of myself as emotionally damaged.
I had a short fuse when I was a child but I think OBPI children do because of frustrations.
We are not mature enough to handle all the frustrations and challenges.

Kath robpi

Yes I have two kids (boys)and they do give me strength. They are very protective of me and I appreciate their strentgh. There were many times they would get into fights because other kids would tease them about their "Mother's broke arm" they felt the need to defend their Mother's honor,but over the years they found ways to ingore comments like that.(Thank God) But as a parent I still felt bad about my kids having to go through such nonsense. As any parent would feel, we try to prevent our children from unecessary pain,and we especially don't want to be the cause of it. But, one thing I can say about my sons is that they are truly accepting of all kinds of people and have a lot of respect for individuals. I think they both will make excellent husband and Fathers one day.

Hi Shelly, I just replied to your posting, but I forgot to log in. So I am a (guest) I was just commenting about my kids. Thanks for sharing.

Hey Steve, I feel you, I was the only kid in my class that could not get an 'A' in gym. Remember the rope we had to climb. I wasn't even allowed to try because every one though I would hurt myself. Not to mention trying out for the Basketball team.(Who said you have to dribble the ball using each of your hands) Nor can I forget the rejection at the hands of the police department when I applied for a job. They looked at me a told me that I would not be able to pass the agility test. Oh well, I guess you can say that's the past, but deep down inside it still affects me until this day.

Kath, you are absolutely right. But how do you know that you are grieving. I am not feeling sorry for myself, but I can't seem to get past the what ifs? And not that I am getting older I become more and more depressed. I very seldom go out. My last night out on the town was ruined by a man who left me on the dance floor after he "noticed" my arm. I love to Ballroom dance but I don't because strangers do not want hear an explanation as to why they cannot spend me with my right arm. As for dating, it is unfortunate that so many men still focus on that perfect 10.