Handicapped Access

I had surgery on my foot, involving bone saws and screws, on November 29. "It's a 4 to 6 week recovery period," the surgeon said.

Of course, my bones didn't get the memo. They refused to regenerate bone cells at a 4 to 6 week rate, so I had gaps in the bones. I had to stay off my feet, putting no weight on the foot, until January 8. That's 7 weeks. Seven. (It would be another two weeks after that before the cast came off.)

Since "no weight" means, well, NO weight on the foot, I spent those seven weeks in a wheelchair.

I'd been optimistically hoping for 4 weeks. I think I handled it fairly well, but boy, was I ready to WALK again.

I think that everyone should have to use a wheelchair for at least a week at some point in their lives. They should have something sharp attached to the bottom of one foot, too, to make sure it doesn't touch the ground. Otherwise, the object lesson is lost, and it's like using a desk chair to scoot around.

There's so many experiences - sleeping in a cast, showering with a shower chair - that you really have to experience to appreciate, but right now, I'm going to discuss one: wheelchair accessibility in public places.

When you're in a chair, suddenly any change in elevation is huge. Steps look like climbing the Alps. Any incline is exhausting (going up), a hazard (going down sharply) or a relief (going down gradually). In the movie theater, after wheeling myself to the restroom, I had to grab the hand rail and use it to haul myself up the incline, hand over hand, to the seating area. Later, when my son pushed my chair up the same hill, he said, "Wow, I never noticed that it went up like this before."

Restrooms, theaters, tables at restaurants - suddenly, you can't just choose any available spot. You have to choose the spots that will allow you access.

My first week in the chair, we went out to eat with visiting relatives. The waitress took away one of the chairs at the table, and I rolled right up, with my knees tucking neatly under the table. That was nice. At home, my legs run into the table leg at our dinner table, and I had to fold the wheelchair legs and let my feet sit on the ground if I was going to use the computer desk; otherwise, I didn't fit under the homemade desk.

Then came the first real obstacle; it was a buffet restaurant. I could run the wheels on my chair or hold my plate, but not both. Hmm. It was also difficult to reach most of the food. Sigh. Still, both of those things were doable with help from my family.

Then, I had to use the restroom. At home, my downstairs bathroom is too small for the chair. I had to park it at the door, hold onto the countertop, then hop 2 or 3 steps to the toilet. From the toilet, I could swing myself into the shower and onto the shower chair. It was pretty easy (aside from the fact that I hate hopping. My balance stinks, for one thing, and I only clear the floor by an inch or so.)

It shouldn't be too big a deal to use the public restroom, I assumed. There's handicapped access stalls, right?

The restroom entrance was difficult to manage. It had a fairly sharp, narrow turn in it. I had to take it carefully, and my chair took up all the room. Nobody could have passed me. The restroom itself was roomier, and I wheeled easily on tile floors down to the single handicapped stall.

I turned and wheeled in, and encountered my first problem. I couldn't turn the chair around, and therefore couldn't close the stall door. If I went back out and wheeled in backwards, so I could close the door, I wouldn't be able to transfer from my chair to the toilet. Hmmm.

I was scrabbling over the back of my chair, trying to close and latch the door, when a woman and her daughter came in. The woman sent her daughter over to help me just as I managed to get it closed by myself. I suppose that restroom designers assume that anyone in a chair will have help, but I don't know why.

I learned to truly appreciate spacious stalls that allowed me to turn my chair around. It had a tight turning radius, but in some stalls, I had only three or so inches on either side of me, and that's not enough. More than once, I'd have to kneel on the chair in order to close a stall door.

Once, the handicapped stall wasn't even big enough for my chair. With the chair almost touching the toilet, I couldn't close the stall door because my chair protruded - a good ten or twelve inches! - out of the stall. I used the restroom anyway; I had to. I hoped no one would walk in while I was there, and they didn't, but I couldn't have done it any differently.

The worst experience was at a movie theater. The handicapped stall was deep enough for me to get my chair in and close the door, but the chair was actually against the front of the toilet by that point. There was no way to turn around and sit properly on the toilet. Even if I'd managed to turn around, I would have had to have my legs up over my chair; it wasn't going to happen. There was no room down the side of the stall to put my legs, even to stand up and turn around. Of course, I had to go too urgently to go find another restroom. I'm lucky that my clothes are stretchy, and I'm not squeamish. I had to drop my pants and underwear down below my knees, then scoot forward to straddle the toilet, facing the back of the stall. My right leg had barely enough room between the toilet and the solid wall, but the left leg, with the cast on it, had to stick under the wall shared with the next stall. I wondered what anyone would think of my straddling the toilet backwards, or my foot sticking into their space, and decided that I didn't care. My bladder was full.

I think that anyone who designs "handicapped access" for public places needs to actually use their facilities, while in a wheelchair. Just because it's ADA compliant doesn't mean that it actually works for someone in a chair.