I'm grateful to the lovely Emma for introducing me to this poem:
My New Set of Wheels
There you stand, and I see you stare
Thinking, poor dear, she’s stuck in that chair.
But I’m not sad, I’m very happy because
I haven’t forgotten the way it was.You’d say, “How about a trip to the zoo?
A walk in the park will be good for you.”
I was thinking tomorrow, I’ll be a wreck,
From my aching feet, to the pain in my neck.You’d want to go shopping, all over town.
I was thinking but there’s no place to sit down.
For you it’s a snap, just to go to the store.
But for me the ordeal was more of a chore.Now I can go wherever I please
I can shop in the mall with newfound ease,
Do all the things that have to be done,
And even go out and have some fun.So, do you want to know how it really feels,
To be sitting here between these wheels?
Can you remember back that far,
When you got your very first car?Well, that’s how these wheels feel to me.
They don’t hold me down, they set me free.
So, don’t think all those pitiful things:
These aren’t wheels, I think they’re my wings.By Darlene Uggen
from Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul
Copyright 1999 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
It expresses really well how important, how liberating, a wheelchair is for someone with severe mobility problems. And that's one reason I get so cross with the rules for the provision of NHS wheelchairs here - they seem not to grasp this point at all.
I don't qualify for an NHS power chair from my local wheelchair clinic because I can walk a few steps indoors. Now that doesn't mean I can walk at all on the uneven ground you get outdoors, let alone walk to the shops or anywhere else. Even if they would give me a power chair, it would be an indoor chair only - so it still wouldn't help me with getting out. They'd give me a manual chair, but since my arms are too weak for me to propel it, again that doesn't really help.
I don't just want to stay inside, occasionally managing my few tottering steps around the house. I want - and need, as part of my self-image and self-esteem, not to mention for practical reasons - to get out and be part of the community, as the "normal" person I am.
And that's the reason why I've recently had to fork out just under four thousand notes on my lovely, if rather dubiously named, Quickie.
All I can assume is that "Quickie" doesn't mean the same in the USA as it does here...not what I would have called a natural choice of brand name, but it's a good chair.
I don't blame the individuals at Wheelchair Services. They're implementing the rules they've been given. I may print out multiple copies of Darlene Uggen's poem, though, and send them to whoever it is makes the rules in the first place...
