By Heidi Johnson Wright
My dad took
me to school my first day back. The school administration suggested we come in
through the loading dock, then pass through the boiler room. I was cargo to be
unloaded, like a case of industrial-strength rat poison.
Most of my
classmates had no idea I was returning to school at all, and I’d told only a
couple of close friends that I’d be using a wheelchair until I regained the
ability to walk. I could see the shocked looks of students and teachers as my
dad and I entered the corridor.
I’d
attracted plenty of stares and snickers before the surgeries, with my leg brace
and crutches. But in the chair, I had reached a whole new nadir of gimpdom.
Funny how sticking your ass in a 25-pound metal, vinyl and rubber contraption
can bring about a new world order.
By the start
of sophomore year, I was no longer using the chair. But six years of severe
arthritis had transformed my gait from one of long, speedy strides to the
side-to-side, slow waddle of a penguin. Three minutes was barely enough time
for me to change classes.
To
accommodate me, all of my teachers agreed to let me leave class a few minutes
early. But that solved only one of two problems. The first was my slowness in
getting from here to there. The second problem how to get from a seated to a
standing position.
Serialized from New Mobility Magazine Digital
http://newmobility.unitedspinal.org/NM_Mar_18/#?page=34
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