4:12pm November 16, 2014

I’m glad I’ve kept all my assistive tech, even stuff I don’t seem to need.

(Someone was trying to encourage me to get rid of my wheelchairs, including ones I would never be able to replace if I needed them again. No. Just no.)

Anyway, there’s a big hill near my apartment. Actually, there’s a lot of big hills near my apartment. That’s what happens in lake towns.

And I’ve found that I can’t easily navigate it with a cane, but with crutches it’s perfect. It’s like being a four-legged animal. I can feel where the ground is, and adjust my balance accordingly, instead of trying to use my crappy eyesight to judge where to put my feet. It’s a little hard to explain the crutches on flat ground, when they’re clearly overkill, but so far nobody’s asked.

So if I’m going out and planning on flat, even ground only, then a cane is fine. If I’m expecting steep slopes or ground that is tilted to one side, then absolutely I need crutches. And it’s amazing the difference it makes. It’s like my entire kinesthetic reference point is changed, until it’s unrecognizable from the one I have when I’m trying to walk on only two feet. And honestly no matter how well I use my eyes, it can’t possibly make up for the fact that my visual perception of spatial relations sucks really badly. And I do far better receiving information about my surroundings directly through my body, than I do receiving that info indirectly. Just another “Wow, I really am a kinesthetic learner” moment.