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12:58am July 23, 2012

➸ "You don't need this junk. You need a cat.": This is directed at twocentsormore.

feliscorvus:

youneedacat:

Because I want to get outside of that horrible thread about people who can stand up out of wheelchairs not really being disabled. (As if most people faking disability would be stupid enough to stand up out of their chair in public or show any other signs of stereotype violation. They are probably…

Hope it’s okay to comment here even if the OP wasn’t directed at me (I figure it probably is, but anyway). Regarding hypermobility/general body weirdness and assistive devices: as a kid I had a major perseveration regarding medical/assistive devices of all kinds. I don’t know what prompted it but for the most part it was based in a sense of “oh wow, COOL, all these nifty ways for humans to get around!”  Like youneedecat said in a prior comment, basically I’ve always seen things like wheelchairs as being qualitatively equivalent to bicycles and whatnot, and it was seriously annoying and weird to find out that so many people viewed chairs, etc., as “symbolic of suffering”, etc. Especially given I really liked walking around with crutches and such if I could get my hands on them. [I used to get endless amounts of grief from people about this, being constantly told “oh you don’t NEED those”, and “handicapped people will think you’re mocking them!”, and even superstitious nonsense like when my grandmother insisted it was a “bad omen” (as in, she thought that using crutches for non-approved reasons would result in breaking your legs in the course of using them.).]

…but I digress. The point I wanted to get to being that at this point in my life I actually rather suspect that my reason for (for instance) wanting to use crutches was only part fascination. With another part of it being rooted in the fact that being able to touch the ground with something connected to my arms/hands improved my balance and walking ability HUGELY. Getting that kind of sensory feedback rather than just having my hands/arms “floating around in the air” made moving forward along a sidewalk a much easier prospect than usual. It’s weird because I actually had really good balance when it came to things like bicycling and walking along the tops of chain-link fences, but give me a level surface and I would almost certainly end up falling over my own feet in short order.

[It was so bad that my parents used to half-joke that if we were walking in public and I suddenly “disappeared” they knew to look down because I’d probably be on the ground somewhere. And I remember for a while people commenting that one of my feet turned out sideways a lot. OH and that reminds me…for a while I was obsessed with wrapping my legs up in ACE bandages. Part of that I think was because it was a great way to get deep pressure, but it may have also helped with hypermobility stuff. I used to twist my ankles a lot. Etc]

I was nearly put in a leg brace for a foot turning out like that, but they settled for unofficial physical therapy instead. (I took a dance class and my mother molded my legs into all the positions because I had no idea what was happening.)

I found that ankle braces are amazing at reducing pain, and they work by wrapping something around your ankle. So maybe it was doing that kind of thing for you.

And I know exactly what you mean about crutches. I used to walk around with bamboo walking sticks because I felt much better as a modified “quadruped”. And now that I use crutches sometimes, I am very happy with that aspect of them. It makes my whole body feel connected.