July 12, 2008
Journey in the Dinetah
I don't recall the first time I saw a good wheelchair. Not the crappy industrial blue things you see in most hospitals, but the good 'chairs, the ones for folks who are in permanent need of wheels for mobility. But I do recall being fascinated with wheelchairs from the get-go, a bit more so than most kids. I have this thing for wheel-ed objects, skateboards, scooters, bikes, hybrids ... I love wheels.
I was half-afraid as a kid that I would wind up in a wheelchair one day. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I was determined that if it did happen, I would not complain and I would get used to my wheel-ed state as quickly as possible. This fascination made me rather aware of accessibility issues that others wouldn't necessarily notice. I could imagine how difficult it would be to reach things on higher shelves - I was a li'l monkey, remember, and loved climbing all over the cabinets to get things that as a kid, I couldn't reach. Now, what if I was stuck in a wheelchair and couldn't use my legs to climb all over everything? How the heck would I get at the good stuff in the cabinets then? How would I get around the mall? Some of them didn't have an elevator that I could see.
My mother thought I was insane. Fixated was perhaps a better word ... I would insist on noting, when we went to a different church in a different town: "Someone in a wheelchair wouldn't be able to come here. Look at all those steps. How do people in wheelchairs go to church?"
My mother would just stare at me.
Even worse, I would look at a long wheelchair ramp somewhere and gleefully announce that I bet it was really fun to zoom down that ramp in a wheelchair. The fun zooming on that ramp might maybe make up for some of the places that you couldn't go in a wheelchair.
Yes, I was an odd child.
In fact, now that I think about it, one of the main characters in my second novel spent his days in a wheelchair.
So, when I broke this leg and heard the commandment "Thou shalt not put the slightest morsel of weight on it for four months," I had a pretty good idea of the accessibility issues I was about to face. At first I thought eh, I'll get around on the crutches - until everyone who saw me on them freaked out. Then I thought, eh, I'll use a walker without the wheels. Four points of contact on the ground are good, plus I can lean on it to rest when I need to do so. That has killed my shoulders, and more to the point, my left leg. You see, my left knee and ankle are both quite messed up and cantankerous. So, of course, I broke the right leg, which is putting total stress on the left leg, often to the point where the unbroken leg hurts far worse than the broken one.
So, I have given in to the wheelchair. At first I thought that was the wussy way out, but now I'm realizing that given all of my health issues, it's really the only solution.
Except our house was built in 1952. The wheelchair won't fit through the bathroom door, but that's okay. Even if it did, it would get hung up between the sink and the tub. (And it's a newly installed pedestal sink!) I certainly wouldn't be able to turn the 'chair around in there.
I can barely get the wheelchair into the bedroom, the wheels fit tight up against the frame and the door, but it is do-able. Of course, we have to get the dirty laundry situated just right so that my other half can get to her closet ... and I can still get into the bed.
And then there's the living room. It's longer than it is deep which means there's just not a lot of room here. We've each got a recliner, then my drawing table, then the coffee table and then the entertainment center. I can pull up to my drawing table, hobble out, fold the wheelchair and stay in my recliner. I can't easily get between the drawing table and the coffee table to make it to the futon.
Kitchen and dining room? Forget it. No way in short of using the walker and an extreme amount of care. The dimensions are just too close.
But, I knew all of this long before this debacle with my leg.
Getting out of the house, for some reason, was not something I'd thought about much. Were I to be in a 'chair six months or more, it might be worth it to build a ramp. As it is there are four steps up to the door and a kind of half step up into the house itself. There are no rails on either side of the steps up to the door and there's really not enough room for two people to go up those steps simultaneously (one person could act as a stabilizing rail and I could use a crutch as well - best way to get up the steps). Instead, I put the knee of my casted leg onto the steps and knee my way to the top and then use the rail at the top (but why no rail on the sides??) to leverage myself back up again ... hop into the house ... and by that time I'm incredibly grateful to collapse into the wheelchair, energy spent.
So the school at Dzilth-na-o-dith-hle in New Mexico was a happy surprise to me. Despite being built the same year I was born (1968, for those of you keeping score), the place was astonishingly accessible. The dorm building in which we were housed was just one floor, but was on about three levels. There were no stairs or even a single step down - it was all ramps.
The first night, I hobbled in on my walker - there had been no room in the vans for us to bring the wheelchair. At an altitude of some 8000 or 9000 feet, my endurance was quickly tapped out, but the floors of the dorm were all tile. We quickly found an office chair on wheels that I could use to kind of scoot around on. The trick, we discovered that evening at dinner time was I could either use the walker to go half-way around the cafeteria building (which was right next to our dorm, thank goodness) and use the ramp to get in - or I could have someone to the right of me be my crutch and a hand on the rail to my left to help me hop up several steps, and then resume using the walker to a seat inside. Since the altitude was messing with me so much, I opted for the stairs, which were closer.
There was a great handicapped bathroom - and I mean bath room, which was an intense relief. I really didn't want to take sponge baths to whole time I was there!
Sunday, the group all went out to Chaco Canyon for a little cultural site-seeing and to really prepare themselves for the weather, altitude and how exertion would affect them during the coming work week ahead. I called the facility on the very, very, very off-chance that they might rent wheelchairs so I could perhaps see at least a little bit of the area. I was unsurprised, if disappointed, when they confirmed they did not rent any such thing. So, I handed one of the disposable cameras to my other half with the command to go forth and take good pictures.
Monday morning, I commenced to calling local churches to see if anyone had a wheelchair we could borrow for my stay in New Mexico. First church I called - bumblingly as I despise the phone and my speech on said stupid contraption shows it - had a wheelchair we could borrow. Awesomeness. By Monday afternoon I was fully mobile again. WOOHOO
So, Monday prior to getting the chair, I propped myself on a couch and proceeded to help two other folks divide up the boxes and boxes of books which had been sent to start a reading program. Chapter books, read-to-me picture books, elementary school, older/jr. high, high school, adult (and some of those adult books were ... ah... "adult" as well as adult reading level). Sadly, on Tuesday, there was not enough room in the vehicle for me to keep my leg elevated and include the wheelchair. So, I didn't get to do any work that day. I did spend some time drawing flyers to advertise the community meal we were going to sponsor on Thursday evening. And I did draw up the flyers to advertise the reading program itself. It didn't seem like much to me. Oh, and I made a big-arse batch of guacamole that night as well. Still, it seemed like small beans to me compared with building a playground or building rails on the side of a ramp or even the heavy-duty de-weeding of an elderly woman's front yard. You see, out on the rez, you don't want ANY greenery near your house. None. You want the brown dirt. Why?
So the snakes don't decide to live near your home and perhaps drop in on you for a little visit.
At any rate, sorting some books one day, drawing a couple of flyers and making huge batches of guacamole two nights running just doesn't seem like I accomplished a whole lot on what was supposed to be a work trip. I am told that I was "inspiration" for others ... but that seemed to me like a pretty passive amount of work for me to do. Ah well. I enjoyed being out there, and I enjoyed meeting so many new folks and interacting and moving.
One of the interesting bits was the night we decided to hold our little umm, thoughtfulness doohickey in the hogan out behind the school. (Yes, everyone else called it worship. But it was really most often a moment to reflect on the day and the experiences more than anything else.) Anyhow, I used the wheelchair and shot down the ramp to the back of the school and then surveyed the path. I decided that since I didn't have this chair to the left, it was just too sandy to take the wheelchair out into the sand. I figured the distance to the hogan was the outer edges of my strength, but dammit, I have loved the Dine (the Navajo) since I was a little kid and I really really wanted to get into the hogan. I rested once on the way and once I got there I realized ... I was at the end of my strength. I couldn't get into the hogan. There was a short step up ... and a long step down ... and no room for people to stand next to me. (Not to mention, in a hogan, women enter first, proceed in a clockwise direction around the hogan and sit - then, the men go in, using the same clockwise movement to get to their seats - I couldn't let one of the stronger guys go in before me and help me down even if I felt strong enough!)
I compromised and let everyone go in and I sat on the doorway. Soaking up the atmosphere of the hogan itself ... and looking out at the Dinetah around me.
On the way back, one of the guys just insisted there was a hard-pack trail without so much sand off to the side and he really wanted to get the wheelchair and help me wheel back instead of everyone watching me make the tortuously long journey back using the walker. I agreed, but it really was too bad we didn't have the all-terrain wheelchair, as there was still plenty of sand on the hardpack as well. He wound up having to drag me instead of pushing me and I felt horrible for wearing out the poor man.
I have more to say about my trip to the Dinetah, but I wanted to concentrate on the accessibility issues first since that's still my biggest trouble - and apparently will be for the next three months to come. After all, I've only been working on this post since the 8th ... it's time to stick a fork in it and call it done!
And now for a little view of what can be done in a wheelchair ... oh, and yes, I have already been forbidden to try any of what you're about to see. Which sucks. It looks like a lot of fun. But I'm in a borrowed light-duty 'chair, not a purpose-built indestructo-chair. *sigh*
Anyhow, check this out:
Posted by Red Monkey at July 12, 2008 4:25 PM | | 
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WOO HOO!! Love that video - ahhhhh - but I can see why you've been forbidden to emulate it!
Interesting read - I enjoyed even getting a little bit of the flavor of part of the country to which I've never been!
Besides, it's just great to see you back in action!
July 12, 2008 8:04 PMr.e.wolf said:
This is timely for me. I was just reading this week that my hometown finally broke ground on a new post office - one that will finally be wheelchair accessible. It was shocking to learn that after all these years they'd never even built a ramp! One postmaster did propose a "doorbell" outside that someone in a wheelchair could ring to summon a postal employee to come wait on them - people were appalled but it's ok, he never bothered to implement it, anyway.
July 12, 2008 11:22 PMTara R. said:
I'm so glad you found that video... my Boy and I watched that on TV not too long ago. He's a big skater and I had to tell him 'no, you can't get a wheelchair.'
Your trip sounds wonderful.
July 15, 2008 8:48 PM
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