Disability confidential. Informing. Empowering. Agitating.
Life After Paralysis is a blog that represents a variety of paralysis community members. It is a place for open conversation about the issues and the interests of people living with paralysis, their family, friends, caregivers, and the professionals that serve them.
Comments are welcome!
The opinions expressed in these blogs are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
(Find out more about the contributors at www.ChristopherReeve.org/contributors.)
Category: Independent Living Category
The parking battle never seems to end. It has been over 20 years since the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed and implemented, and many businesses have yet to use a gallon of paint and a couple of signs to mark off parking spaces that are accessible to those who need them due to the presence of a disability. It has taken enough years that I sometimes wonder if we will ever see some universal success in this arena. Even then, the battle will not be over.
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We live in a world surrounded by danger, which is obvious to anyone who watches the news. That has been especially evident during the past few months, beginning with the shootings at the theater in Aurora, Colorado, continuing through the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, the police standoff at Big Bear Lake in California, and might best be epitomized by the Boston Marathon bombings and the shootouts that followed.
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The year of my spinal cord injury, 1988, was a very bad year. Surprisingly, I did not realize how bad it really was until some old correspondence was discovered while my sister was cleaning out my mother's files a couple of months ago. The family Christmas letter from that year told the full story, and I learned from that two-page letter that I must not have been aware of what had been going on around me that entire year.
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For weeks, I've been working on a piece I want to share with you but it's become a tortured mess. It went from earnest to maudlin and appears beyond salvageable. In the middle of the ripping out of hair and gnashing of teeth, 110 pounds of unconditional love threw herself in my lap and demanded her time in the park. Now.
Let me tell you about Pearl…
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“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
—Hunter S. Thompson
I have accomplished the part about being used up and totally worn out, but I am not yet ready to skid in -- broadside or otherwise. Instead, I would like to stay healthy so I can enjoy what life is left, but need some help doing so.
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I love almost everything about my little house, from the frictionless slate floors to the low sunny windows, to the roomy, curbless roll-in shower to the fully accessible kitchen where I can make a complete Thanksgiving meal on my own. If I could just pick it up and transport it to another neighborhood, I'd be over the moon happy.
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"As the blur of the first hours, days or weeks
Turns into a realization that freedom is gone forever,
The bed becomes a prison in its own small world.
The ministering hands become symbols of helplessness
In a world of the independent.
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