I read the news on CNN every morning. And today, a headline about Liu Yan caught my eye. She was (Some say she still is? That‘s strange) considered one of China’s top dancers, and she was scheduled to dance a number called the “Silk Road” at the opening ceremonies during the Beijing Summer Olympics last year.
But, as you probably heard by now, that never came to pass. Twelve days before the ceremony she fell during rehearsal, breaking her back, and has been unable to move anything from the waist down since. She’s technically a paraplegic, and as it goes with most spinal cord injuries, doctors don’t hold a sliver of hope that Liu will ever walk again.
And while this is tragic, it’s pretty much the truth (barring any miraculous cures for spinal cord injury that may be discovered in the semi-near future). But as I read the article, I realized Liu was adamant, determined in fact, that she WILL walk again. But is it wise to think this way? Will this only lead to disappointment, and in the end, further depression?
“Healthy dancers practice every day, I will do the same. This is how I am different from other patients -- I believe that I will recover when I do my exercise. I will live with hope,” she says in her interview with CNN.
One must wonder: Does she feel this way because the Chinese look down on people who accept their paralysis? Or is it because her injury is still so new she hasn’t come to terms with it yet? Or maybe….I’m the wrong one to be such a pessimist, and that maybe she really will walk again?
Whatever ends up happening, we’ll know in two years. That is when all possible healing that a body can do by itself to heal a damaged spinal cord will cease. After that, if she hasn’t gotten better on her own, she will not walk again on her own. She’ll have to wait for some kind of treatment to be developed.
