When is the right time to start using a mobility aid?
When is the right time to start using a mobility aid? Is there a right time? I would say that the perfect time is when using an aid increases your quality of life or makes your day-to-day life a little easier.
I have many chronic illnesses. Apparently, you can’t just have one (you have to catch them all!! (Pokémon reference;-)). The main symptoms I live with on a daily basis are extreme fatigue to the point of muscle failure, the pain of varying degrees and dislocations. By far, the most debilitating of these is extreme fatigue. You can’t describe fatigue to someone who has never experienced it. The way to explain it in a more scientific way is to explain cellular structure. Don’t worry, I’m not going to baffle you with science! Each and every cell in your body needs to have a power source and that is called mitochondria. Those people who have chronic fatigue have damage to this power source. Essentially, it is a faulty battery, and this means that every single process in the body is affected. So you can use up energy simply by digesting food or processing what you are watching on TV. Those who have very severe chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) have no energy supply within their body to eat or digest food and need to be tube-fed. They need to lie down in a darkened room as the stimulus of light is too much for the body to handle. For those of us with less severe CFS/ME, it is a case of saving energy wherever you can.
I am an ambulatory powerchair user. My house is not accessible, so I just use my powerchair outside of the house. I use it for the school run, for shopping, for socializing, and anywhere I will be sitting for a while. The way my powerchair is set up means that it’s much more comfortable than a regular chair. I probably started using it a lot more regularly about four years ago. I made this change at this point because I was physically exhausted. I literally don’t even know how I survived this time, as I had a young child. I was being woken up multiple times in the night, and my internalized ableism wouldn’t allow me to do it earlier. Even though I was a disabled parent either in or out of my powerchair, I didn’t want any judgment from anyone about my abilities as a parent. I wish I had started using it more often, much, much sooner.
Mobility aids can take many different forms. From a walking stick or crutches to a manual wheelchair or powerchair. From rollators to mobility scooters. How do you decide what might work for you? This might be down to what you feel comfortable using. I am strangely much more comfortable with using my powerchair than I am using a walking stick. I think this may be due to the image I am projecting using it. This has nothing to do with what the general public will think about a relatively young woman using a walking stick, but it has to do with my own ableism and worry over what people might think seeing me use it.
Before I went ahead and bought a power chair, I had been renting one for a few months. This made it blatantly clear in my mind and with how my body felt after using it that I really should have done this earlier. The relief of getting back from a shopping trip or a time outside and not feeling that you immediately need to go to bed and sleep was life-changing. I honestly felt like a different person. I was able to function much more effectively. I was sleeping less and engaging with family and friends much more. I was also in less pain, had less post-exertion malaise, and felt like I was getting some of my quality of life back. I wished that I had done it so much sooner. Is it time for you to consider looking into using a mobility aid?
