One of the problems with trying to promote disability awareness is getting people to see things from a disability perspective. It can be hard for people to understand issues without the same frame of reference used raising them.
Oh, I know there are plenty of “simulator” methods out there used to try and show people how disabilities themselves “feel”, but that’s only part of the story – how we interact with our environment as people with disabilities also needs to be explained.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an advocate for accessible public transport in the Metropolitan Washington DC area (or in general, if you consider my support for those fighting for accessible transport in the UK recently too).
I just realized that I’ve whilst advocating for that, I’ve kind of assumed that the destination I use transit to reach will be accessible to begin with.
Thinking back on it, I don’t think it was a bad assumption to make in the DC area, really – I haven’t encountered a place I wanted to visit that barred me from doing so because of my wheels in many years now, the nation’s Capital doesn’t seem inclined to turn away perfectly good visitors and customers simply because of their mode of locomotion (for the most part).
For many years, I’ve been an advocate about disabled-accessible mass-transit here in the DC area. It reached a stage where Pat and I kicked open a website dedicated to bringing to light issues with the system, DC Paratransit Info.
During that time, I’ve learned a great many things about mass-transit, and paratransit, that most people never get involved with – it’s kind of hard to suggest ways to help reduce issues if I couldn’t speak the same language.
It’s been two weeks now since I had the Solumedrol infusion (see the “Related Posts” at the bottom for links to previous posts about it), so I figure I’ve pretty much experienced all of the effects, intended and side, of the process and and should finish writing about the whole thing.
One of the important things to keep in mind about all of this is dosages, though.
Looking around the Interwebs before we started all of this, there are a lot of posts about people’s experiences with Solumedrol. But looking back on it all, I think the majority of those are talking about longer term treatment, and/or a much higher dosage regime.
This is the usual view of the aisles at our local CVS pharmacy.
If asked, the store will always try to explain it away as a temporary situation because of deliveries. Their definition of temporary seems to extend to several days – you know, up to the *next* delivery?
Some of the aisles in this clip are blocked by static end-cap displays that were placed half-way across also.
It makes the only practical wheelchair accessibility to their store, including at times reaching their pharmacy section, be via the good old fashioned bulldozer method – if you’re going to leave your crap blocking my passage, I’m gonna move it for you.
Well it’s been an interesting morning so far.
First thing was discovering my fasting blood sugar is 190. Not so good, considering the insulin and Metformin aren’t nearly as effective due to the Solumedrol.
Then we discover the IV line is blocked somewhere – can’t even get the initial saline flush into it. Put in a call to Home Solutions, who’ll send a nurse to resite the line.
So a huge box of supplies arrived last night – a silvered bag full of ice blocks and the meds to go in the fridge, and a frightening array of equipment I’m going to need over the next few days.
Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog might have noticed something.
Although I mention it in my bio, and many of my posts relate to disability, I haven’t really blogged about my disability itself.
There’s a couple of reasons for this: I’m an author, and an artist, and I’d rather people think of those things when they think of me, and not my disability.
Likewise, it’s hard to discuss my disability on a day to day basis, because, to be quite honest, there’s nothing anyone can do about it, I don’t want to risk being pitied, and for me it’d feel like I was just whining about something I can’t change.
I was catching up on my Twitter friends’ feed this evening while waiting for a render to complete, and noticed a mini-rant from Yasmine Galenorn, the author of the Sisters of The Moon novels. With her kind permission, I’m reposting it here to give some context on my own thoughts:
Bad Behavior has blocked 331 access attempts in the last 7 days.