Exercise with Severe RA: Starting the Day with a Dance
I’ve been thinking about exercise. Partly because it’s spring — well, currently waffling back and forth between spring and Springter in Toronto — and partly because I’ve had yet another health professional talk earnestly at me about moving my body. In response to which I pointed out, as I have so many of the times…
My Smoking Wheelchair & Praise for Soul
Starting today off with a small poem: The smell of burning insulation Smoke rising from my wheelchair(I’m okay) But I should start at the beginning. Day 1: In which my wheelchair develops a whistle Sunday afternoon as I was about to nap, I noticed a high pitched whine coming from somewhere. At first, I thought…
In Which I See an OT and Come up against a Stereotype
I have swan necks. Several of them. If you have no experience with RA, you’re probably looking like one big questionmark right now. A swan neck doesn’t just belong on a beautiful bird, but is also the name of a particular deformity common in people who having had acted, untreated RA. It looks like my…
Where the Surf Meets the Sand
The last time I was on a beach was the summer I turned 14. It was also the last time I walked Photo by Ole Andersen The doctors had given me a reprieve before I was to report at the hospital and get encased in plaster to spend a month in a body cast. My…
Refusal of Care: Disabled Women and Breast Cancer Screening
Updated March 16, 2022 I was long past the recommended age to have a mammogram the first time I had one. The reason? Lack of accessibility in cancer screening equipment and procedures. And I’m not alone. Breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer among women, yet women who have a disability are…
Fashion for Real Life: Clothes for People with Disabilities
Living well with a disability has a lot to do with finding new ways to do things. Likewise, accessibility is about throwing out the norm and finding another way to your goal. “Izzy Camilleri has seamlessly united fashion, form, and comfort by defying centuries of design and pattern-making conventions. Most fashions are designed for a…
A Farewell to Joe
Dear Joe, Yesterday, I walked away from you for the final time. The signs have been there for a while, but I closed my eyes to them. I didn’t want to believe that you were leaving me. But today, after over six months of coming to you and having to walk away dismissed, I finally…
Breaking News: I’m Not Crazy!
Between the damage from the big flare in 2004, as well as acquiring fibromyalgia around the same time, a number of interesting twists have been added to my life, the main one having become ridiculously sensitive. A millimeter’s worth of change can throw me off completely, triggering a cascading fibro flare with all its attendant…
Liberated
It is almost Valentine’s Day and tales of love flutter about wherever you look. They are like verbal cupids with wings made of verbs, nouns, adjectives and altogether improper punctuations, for love brings with it a gush of emotion not responsive to the strictures of grammar. And these tales of love are this year…
Blocked
I don’t normally do this. I may hold forth about access and barriers to accessibility, but I don’t normally take on specific individuals or businesses in my neighborhood (except for Buskerfest because they deserve it). However, one of the big grocery stores in my neighborhood has recently done their best to demonstrate that they don’t…
It All Comes Down to the Bathroom
Twice in the last month or so, I’ve been in a situation where when investigating the accessibility of a place I was going to, I was told that absolutely, it’s completely accessible! Well, except for the bathrooms, that is… Huh??? It’s not new, this creative approach to accessibility, happens all the time and it makes…
It Got Me Again
Remember Mercury retrograde? The quarterly phenomenon that astrologers claim affects technology and communication and when I post about how it’s out to get me, I get the distinct sensation that there’s eye rolling out there, people not quite buying into this. Settle in my friends and let me tell you about my week. Have your…