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Merely Inconvenienced
By Chelan M. Pedrow Winter break...Peace, quiet, calm reflection, and a
healthy dose of stress.
 This particular installment of
life through the Prosthetic and Orthotic program at Georgia Tech
should include a scratch-and-sniff sticker that smells like a
roaring wood fire. Although it's one day until this article's due
date, I have been mentally formulating this Pulitzer Prize winner
for weeks, with the actual typing of it saved until the very end.
Winter break finds me home in Idaho for the first time in months.
It has been a wonderfully quiet break, and the only time I've even
thought about last semester's lectures was when the legless and
armless characters from our new Nintendo Wii gaming system flash on
the screen--a system that my grandparents stood in line for hours
to obtain.
The peace and quiet here has spoiled me, and as I reflect on
some of the things that have happened to me over this winter break,
I am surprised by my edgy reactions when faced with unexpected
events. My flight home went smoothly until I flew into the
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) on the coattails of
the December windstorms that knocked out power for thousands of
homes and, unfortunately, the airport control tower. Only a few
hours from home, I watched helplessly as flight after flight was
cancelled, leaving me and hundreds of other passengers stranded in
Seattle. While I received an airline voucher for a hotel room and a
Hertz Ford Mustang, the few hotels that still had power were
filled. So I spent the night in a hospital parking lot huddled in
the passenger seat of the Mustang, wrapped in a borrowed blanket
from the emergency room. My sense of humor was growing thin when
the temperature within the car dropped to near freezing. The
following morning I was one of the fortunate passengers to squeeze
onto the roster of an Idaho-bound plane.
As my return date to school has approached, so too has the bill
for Tech's tuition. The stress of juggling the logistics of work
and classes in graduate school has been building. The final straw
was when my hair-dresser mixed her colors and dyed my hair a sassy
red with tame brown streaks when I had actually requested the
reverse. I drove home in shock, reminding myself that the only man
I'm trying to impress in Georgia is color-blind, and the sunny
northern skies quickly turned ominous gray and enormous slushy
snowflakes fell fast and hard. By the time I reached my parent's
mountain home, we were in the midst of a blizzard and without
electric power.
Mom lit every candle in the house, and Dad stomped through the
snow practicing his Paul Bunyan moves on the firewood, which is
stacked next to the house for times such as these. I was the
designated Girl Scout, starting the fire in the wood stove. Now, as
the mesmerizing orange flames lick snow off the surface of the
firewood, the silence of electronics gone comatose surrounds
me.
The fire roars as I type this article under the faint glow of my
quickly waning battery-powered laptop. My thoughts go to my friends
in Basra who have sporadic electricity for only three hours a day.
I met these Iraqi amputees and technicians when I traveled with a
team from Physicians for Peace to Amman Jordan last summer. We
utilized the amputees as patient models to teach technicians how to
fabricate, fit, and modify limbs. A dear friend, an Iraqi colonel
who had adopted me as his American "daughter," accompanied me to
the airport in the early morning hours to ensure my safe departure.
I cried while the plane taxied down the runway, knowing that I was
flying west to a land of mere inconvenience, and he was flying east
to a war zone.
War zones, natural disasters, and misfortune are all problems
that seldom discriminate between victims. This night I rely on
candlelight and a woodstove for heat, but there were thousands in
Seattle who lived without power for days prior to Christmas, and
many more in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi who suffered
greatly after Hurricane Katrina. I am once again reminded of the
difference between an "inconvenience" and a "problem." It reminds
me never to allow mere inconvenience to stand in the way of being a
solution to a real problem. In this next year, please consider
becoming involved in aid work, solving true problems abroad and
here at home.
Chelan Pedrow is a graduate student in the MSPO Program at
the School of Applied Physiology at the Georgia Institute of
Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. She will be sharing her experiences
through articles in The O&P EDGE throughout her
two-year program, internship, certification, and as she begins her
professional career.
Table Of Contents - February 2007
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