Wheelchair user, dominant, and yes those two things go together fine
Posted as ramp_at_the_front
- Looking for
- someone who will ask about access instead of assuming things
- Experience
- Fourteen years, nine of them since my injury.
- Around
- Midtown, Houston
I have used a chair since an accident nine years ago. I was doing this for five years before that, which means I have run a dynamic from both a standing and a seated position, and I can report that the important parts are unchanged.
The assumptions I get are tiring rather than offensive. That I must be submissive now. That I need looking after. That somebody would be doing me a favour. The last one ends conversations, because a person who thinks that will never kneel with a straight face. Practically, here is what matters. My place is accessible and most other places are not, so I ask questions that sound fussy and are not. Transfers, timing and energy are real constraints and I plan around them without drama. Some things I used to do I no longer do, and I have replaced them with things I am better at.
Forty, Houston, dominant, fourteen years in total. I like protocol, service and a slow build. My voice did most of the work before the accident and it still does. What I want is a long arrangement with somebody who has their own life running alongside it. What I do not want is a carer, a nurse, or anyone who is here because they find disability interesting. I have a physical therapist and I am not looking for a second one.
I am also not delicate about language. You can say the word chair. You can ask whether something is going to work. The one reliable way to offend me is to decide in advance what I can and cannot do.
Ask me anything you actually want to know. I would far rather answer it than watch you tiptoe around it for a month.