I was looking at one of those knee carts recently. I’ve been putting off foot surgery for awhile now, and I’ve been told the recovery time will be around 3 months.
Maybe 10 years or so ago I was temporarily handicapped when I caught my heel under a metal door and the corner ripped out my heel and partially cut my Achilles tendon. I was on crutches for the next two months and at the mercy of whoever was around to help me. I had to be driven everywhere, so naturally I couldn’t do ~whatever~ when I wanted to do it. I had to ask strangers to please hold X for me, could you help me into the motorized scooter there? I half expected for people to ignore me because that’s what many do upon seeing somebody handicapped (I see it all the time at work), but surprisingly it never happened. Some people were taken aback at first, but ultimately seemed genuinely happy to help.
And no, I never applied for a handicapped placard for my car. By the time I would’ve received it I would’ve already been off the crutches, or so I was told.
I’m also temporarily handicapped: severe “hip-spine syndrome” for over 2 months now, with no end in sight. Excruciating pain in my left hip, unable to walk for more than a minute.
Everything **ddsun **has said is true. And I’ll add the way people act around the motorized carts in the supermarket. What would possess people to step directly out in front of a moving cart, mere inches away, and expect the driver to be able to stop on a dime? I have hit people in that situation, and of course it’s assumed that I was at fault.
Say what you will about Walmart, but their carts are always charged, and their aisles are wide enough to accommodate a motorized cart with room to spare. Though yesterday, the cashier gave me a hard time about leaving the store in my cart (my car was parked 20 feet from the entrance). She expected me to carry loads of groceries to the car; I can’t do that. I even promised to return the cart to the store, which I always do.
And I do my shopping very early in the morning, when carts are available. Later, they’re all taken . . . not necessarily by people who really need them. These are the people who think it’s “fun.”
My mother is blind and suffers from bradycardia. She uses a wheeled walker (with a seat and a “Caution: Low Vision” sign on it, the latter to my amusement). When I take her shopping, which is very infrequent these days because she finds it more and more tiring to move, but there are things she’s not comfortable with anyone else buying for her… I use her hangtag placard, park in the handicapped space, and help her out and into the store. When she’s done, sometimes she doesn’t have the energy to get back to the car, so I go the car, pull up to the front of the store, and load her in.
Several times, I have been the target of dark looks that convey ire at the sight of my apparently healthy self climbing into a car parked in a handicapped spot.
Once, someone went so far as to look at the permit, which in Virginia has the name of the person to whom it was issued, and sarcastically call me by my mother’s (obviously feminine) first name.
I had surgery for a necrotic gall bladder last summer, and I was sick for about a month afterwards with the damage that it did to my liver. I resorted to using the scooters at places like Wally*World, and was appalled by people that told me the scooters are for those with handicaps, not fat people too lazy to walk. Mostly I blew it off, but for one over-aerobicized woman with a corncob up her ass and an attitude to match, it was too much. I pulled up my t-shirt to show her the roadmap of stitches and staples left over from the operation. “Hey, bitch. I think major surgery is a valid reason to use these things.”
One of my co-workers had to use a knee-scooter for a while at work. I got her these awesome metallic pink handlebar streamers. I think her daughter inherited them for her own bike after mom was healed up.
I’m on the flip side. Ivylad is in a wheelchair due to mobility issues with a bad back. There have been times I’ve had to pick him up, and I always feel a little self-conscious parking in the handicapped spot without him, despite the fact that he will be getting in the car in just a few.
So far, no one has given me the stinkeye, and we’ve found most restaurants are more than accommodating with his wheelchair.
Sorry to hear you’re having problems. I’m glad it’s just temporary for you.
I once worked for a guy in his 50’s who had emphysema, and couldn’t walk 200 feet without stopping to rest, but who looked perfectly healthy at first glance. Once, parking at a restaurant, we get out of his car and an older guy asks him, “What’s your handicap?”, and without missing a beat, Boss comes back with “Can’t you see I’m blind?”
OTOH, I’m also reminded of the Michael Bay profile I once read (in Esquire?), where he’s explaining to the interviewer how his mother reminds him not to become a jerk now that he’s successful - all while he’s parking his Ferrari in a handicapped spot. :smack:
Yep, I went through this last year when I had my knees replaced. Getting through Sams with a walker was just too much. Strangely I was 30% disabled with bad knees and received a permanent Disability placard. After both knees were replaced the VA raised my disability to 100% but I no longer have a placard as I don’t need it anymore.
Can I add one: It’s sort of in addition to DummyGladHands’ complaint.
Attention: Just because someone is in a wheelchair doesn’t mean they can’t communicate. Address him/her if that’s your patient.
My Mom and grandmother both use wheelchairs, without fail, every receptionists, store clerk and even some physicians address me, when they should be addressing them. Stop it! Assholes.
If it makes you have any faith in humanity - my experiences with my dad (who has polio) are somewhat the opposite.
I would never dream of using a handicap parking space. The fact that my dad is handicapped makes that (I think) even more so. Actually I think I’m a good person and probably doesn’t effect me as much as I thought when I started writing that.
Most people seem to go out of their way to help my dad - but he usually is on crutches - not a wheel chair.
my dad does constantly complain about the lack of access of intelligently designed facilities and accommodations for the handicapped - and points out stuff like “see if they would just move this over there - it would make things much easier”. He went so far as to complain to the County Executive for the lack of handicap parking at the county building that the County Executive gave up his designated parking space and turned it into an extra handicap spot. My dad can be very relentless.
Anyway - I don’t see my dad that often, but in my memory I can’t remember anytime he was treated meanly by a member of the public. Sometimes people ask what happened (almost always when he’s on crutches - almost never when he’s using his cane). I think on crutches people think he might have just broken his leg.
He has mentioned he gets much more help (and my observations bear this out) when on crutches then when using his cane.
Again he isn’t in a wheelchair - and that probably makes a huge difference.
I can feel your disgust. I broke my wrist and spent 10 weeks in a cast. I am amazed how many people think wearing a cast lowers your IQ into imbecile range.
Christopher Reeve had to tell some of his caretakers “I’m a 40 year old man. If you can’t treat me like one, you can leave.”
I’d like to mention the Long Island Railroad in this thread.
There are two tracks at my home station. The South track is mainly for Eastbound (away from NYC) trains and the North track handles most of the NYC bound trains.
All the parking, including about 20 handicapped spots, the station house, the newspaper vendor, etc., are located on the North side. There is also a nice wheelchair ramp on the North side.
To go between platforms these is an overpass with 33 stairs, up and down. No elevator.
So wheelchair people may nicely commute into NYC. However, on the return trip they are screwed unless they can get someone to carry them over the overpass since only two trains per night (both very early) stop on the North side.
Why have 20 handicapped parking spots when only a small minority of handicapped people can manage those stairs and actually use the station?
To accommodate handicapped people all the railroad would have to do is to switch tracks on the evening trains. The really weird thing is that most NYC bound trains originate on the South track one station East of mine and about half the outbound trains switch from the South track to the North before getting to the last stop, which is the next station.
Just incredibly stupid.
I have never been handicapped and actually think I benefit from the exercise of climbing those stairs.
I can’t walk very well or very far without a cane. I have a handicapped license plate but I sometimes see people glare at me. Only once have I been challenged and that was by a woman who asked if I was really handicapped; I told her I was old, ugly, worn out and flat broke and if that didn’t constitute being handicapped I didn’t know what did. She had the grace to laugh and apologize.
Yeah, yeah, your knee hurts. So does mine. I need a new knee, in fact. But since I know that continued use of the knee won’t really do any more damage, and that discomfort won’t kill me, I opt to burn a few calories by walking around the gigantic store that puts the kitty litter in the back and each of the other two items I need at opposite sides of the store.
Take a walk. Lift stuff.
(If I ever tried to get a handicapped sticker because my knee hurts all the time, my grandmother would rise from the dead and haunt me, then go tell my mother what I was up to. My gran had polio as a child, and never considered herself in any way handicapped, despite having a club foot and hip problems that bothered her her entire life.)
I’m asthmatic. I have migraines. I “get” invisible illnesses. But some people manage to medicalize being just fucking lazy.
Not true. My MIL would trot into a store, but we all knew that by the time we were done shopping she wouldn’t be trotting out of the store. He energy would wane over time, sometimes suddenly. So she may look strong and energetic going in, but be really exhausted and couldn’t walk very far by the time we are done.
It’s always surprising to me how people try to cheat the system. There are far too many patients hitting me up for parking placards who just don’t want to walk a little bit and at the same time there are a lot of patients with true severe disabilities who don’t even think to ask. When I get too frustrated, I usually hand them the form and ask them to show me which category they fit in (Can you walk without a cane or walker? Do you need supplemental oxygen? Do you have stage 3 or greater heart failure?). That said, I’m a pretty soft touch overall but there are just some really inappropriate requests. One patient asked me for a placard for carpal tunnel syndrome. I asked her how that prevented her from walking from a regular spot and she tried to tell me that she needed the wider spot because with the hand pain she had trouble navigating into a regular-sized parking spot. She wasn’t happy when I told her that if she was unable to control her car enough to park in a regular spot, then she clearly should not be driving at all and I would be glad to write the DMV and to tell them that.