Errands and Irritation

With laptop finally delivered (purple! it's purple! did I mention it's purple!) I was finally able to get out and about and do the errands that have been queueing up all week.

Firstly into Chatham and park in the most convenient car park (not actually the disabled car park as I still haven't renewed my blue badge). The whole car park is on a slope, making it annoyingly difficult to push in a straight line to get out of there, and while there's a kerb cut to get out of there (as there are a couple of disabled spaces), the corresponding kerb cut on the other side of the road is about 50 metres away. Somewhat amused by the parent who picked up a 5yo, scooter and all, and physically moved her out of my way once I was back on the path (she had actually steered out of my way, but her parental unit evidently decided there wasn't sufficient clearance). That bit of pavement does at least get me into the back of Debenhams, with a convenient lift down to street level.

First call at the phone store. (Note to phone store employees, calling me 'buddy' doesn't impress (note to American readers, British use of 'buddy' is negligible to zero, so it comes over as false, even patronising)). 'Hi, I need to stick some credit on my PAYG phone' 'Have you got your swipe card?', 'Ah, no', 'Well in that case we can't do it, but you can go to Sainsbury's (nearest supermarket), buy a credit voucher there then come back and we can do it then, or if you have the swipe card at home you can ring in and do it.' - Your system, it does not make sense! 

Then to travel agents (Thomsons), I'd passed it on the way to the phone shop and realised access was going to be a sod, to the point I had a quick scout around to confirm there are no other travel agents about. Heavy door, with a lip. I needed one of the staff members to get the door and then had problems getting the front castors over the lip. Finally got in, and access wasn't much better inside, long, narrow space with a row of desks down the middle, they had to move chairs just to let me speak to someone. So I explain the issue - sailing in Greece, want to book flights, and hotel for a few extra days, and hope they might be better set up for working out which hotels are wheelchair accessible than the online apps seem to be, but it seems they're so tightly tied to particular companies they wanted to charge £160 more for flights I already thought were overpriced, and the best they could do on hotels is "we'd have to ring our broker and they'd probably have to ring the hotel". So that was a complete waste of time.

Head over to Rochester, intending to go to GPs and then go get my hair cut. In parking up behind the cathedral I realise that I've complete forgotten about the GPs (fortunately before I got the chair out), so head back over to there, navigate their nightmare of a car park, drop off repeat prescription request, head back to the cathedral, and fortunately there's still a parking place. Wheel into town, which seems to be mostly over cobbles, rattle, rattle, rattle (to the point I've had to re-tighten two of the screws holding the push-rims on, and I just checked those the other day), get to the barbers and there's only three of them working, with seven people in front of me (and of course every one of them opts for a wash and blow dry, when normally you can bet on most guys having the quicker dry cuts). If I hadn't been so irritated by how hot and sticky the weather has been I'd probably have given up. Indeed the guy who walked in just after me was told "about an hour and a half" and did turn around and walk out. It actually wasn't as bad as it could have been, I was done within the hour ("number 2 all over" really doesn't take very long once you get started).

Head back to the car, cursing cobbles, though at least I can now do the whole distance without needing to stop, even though it's uphill on the way back (and new summery wheelchair gloves, recommended by kaberett are truly excellent).

Drive home, cursing rush-hour traffic, only to discover it's yet another crash just opposite my house, with a police car blocking off half the road while they recover three cars (none looked particularly bent, but they had to haul at least one away on a loader).

And I've still got to sort out flights and phone, grr!

Disability as fashion accessory

With the weather so hot today I inevitably opted for shorts when I went out into town, but that meant showing off my latest disability-related accessorizing.

I think I've mentioned that the ankle I trashed this time last year has been aching for the last few weeks, well this week it's really been throbbing constantly, the ankle joint in particular and all up and down the outside of my shin, as though the muscles there are out of balance (and bear in mind I'm already on opiates, so if I can feel it all of the time then it's really not happy). I don't remember doing anything to it, so last year's incident is the obvious smoking gun, and it isn't the first time I've trashed that ankle, which is part and parcel of being hypermobile. The only thing that seems to work for keeping the pain down is keeping it fixed at 90 degrees, which means splinting it. I really don't want to go back to wearing the boot (see icon) - the leg-length issue from it's three inch thick rocker sole is a literal pain in the backside, I do have a night splint, but that's not meant for walking in, which leaves me with my AFO (ankle foot orthosis). That's a plastic brace with a footplate that fits in your shoe, and which then runs up the back of your leg to a cuff just below your knee, there's a lighter strap at the ankle to hold that in. Wearing it really needs a long sock on, so I'm having to wear knee socks for the first time since I was six. And if I'm wearing one AFO then I may as well wear the other, because if I do end up spending a few days in Athens then using the AFOs is probably my best bet if I end up needing to walk any distance without my crutches and I might as well get used to it and identify any problems now (while hopefully avoiding making myself dependent on them - being bendy is a balancing act between too little bracing and too much). I got them to use on days when I was on my feet for a long time, as I tend to get an increasing amount of footdrop as time goes on, but it's one of those issues that's impossible to demonstrate to a GP, and rare enough it's simpler just to sort out your own solution. Only now wearing shorts means all the hardware is on display - I've worn the AFOs before, but always with long trousers covering them.  It's hardly the first time I've worn a visible brace - I wore a hard collar 24/7 for about a decade in the late 80s and 90s, but I guess even when you visibly use mobility aids all of the time you still need to adjust to changes in your bodily image.

Tomorrow should be interesting for imposter syndrome, one of the friends I have lunch with wears a full-length calliper due to polio. She'll probably be fine with it, it's me I'm not so sure of....

More laptop questions.....

Just to put the cherry on top of the HP laptop fiasco, I opened it up last night having let it charge and started going through the setup procedure. 'M's start appearing in each field I'm meant to be filling, I take a closer look at the keyboard and the 'M' key is both wedged down and twisted. An even closer look showed it was being forced out of place by a small piece of plastic wedged between it and the frame. I managed to pop that out with a pin, but it raises a huge question over whether they filled my supposedly unfillable order by finding a returned or factory-second machine. Yet more pointed questions to go into my email to them.

Bloody (Evangelical) Christians

I'd no sooner rolled onto the high street this afternoon than a teenager came up to me, I'd guess his age at 16-18.

"Excuse me," 

He'd caught me literally half-on and half-off the kerb (fortunately the high street is pedestrianised on Saturdays), so he got a glare to start with.

"Can I ask you a question."

At this stage he could still conceivably have been asking for directions, and he was too smartly dressed to be a beggar.

"What?"

"What happened to you?"

"What? Why should I tell you? Have you any idea how rude that is?"

At this stage he started to look uncertain, but apparently was convinced his answer would show that he was in the right:

"I want to pray for you, I'm a Christian."

Wrong person to try that on.

"Why would you want to do that? You don't want to do anything for me, you want to feel good about yourself. Christianity has an appallingly negative attitude to disability. Look, God created us in his image, yes?"

He nods.

"Well here I am, in his image (gesture at myself and the chair), why would I want to change that? Don't pray for me, go away and pray for your own illumination."

It's never really happened to me before, ISTR short-circuiting a couple of attempts to start up that sort of dialogue and friends have had it happen multiple times, but it's the first time someone has plunged in so bluntly. And of course the wheelchair is probably a factor.

I think the thing that shocked me most about it was demanding to know "what happened to you" as his opening, the utter ignorance of disability and basic etiquette it reveals beggars belief.