I’ve been thinking a lot these past few days about what it means to be handicapped. Disabled is the PC term these days. It doesn’t make much difference to me, but some people who have a disability want to be regarded as “differently abled”, and I get that. Especially if the person has a severe disability and doesn’t want pity or to be made to feel less of a person. My disability has developed over time and my own lifestyle was partially to blame. That does not make me any less handicapped. As I understand it, to be disabled or handicapped means that I am not be able to do some things that able-bodied people can, easily, or even at all.
This week I saw a post on some site in which the author wrote about “The Scooter Store Scam.” It seems that, to this person, the scam was the very idea that The Scooter Store can offer, as they do in their TV commercial, a mobility scooter or power chair “for little or no money” out of pocket. The person who commented on the “scam” said that it was a scam, because even if the person who would receive the scooter or chair without paying anything out of pocket, it wouldn’t really be free at all, since taxpayers like her would be footing the bill. (I don’t know what gender the poster was, so I’ve chosen to say her.) She went on to say in a more aggravated tone that just that day she had seen a person shopping who was using one of the mobility scooter and that person was obese. The author of the post mentioned that, in her opinion, most of the people she’s ever seen using one of those mobility scooter were (in her words) fat slobs. She said she wanted to lean down to the obese woman in the scooter and say, “Why don’t you just stop eating and get some exercise!”
I didn’t post a comment. There are some people who will always find something to grouse about. I wonder if that angry person has ever had a weight problem. I have struggled with my weight almost all of my life. In fact, except for my the year I married my husband, (I lost 88 pounds, so I would look good in a wedding dress – and I did)! the last time I remember being actually thin was when I was ten years old. I’ve been in this war with fat for more than 50 years. Let me tell you, it’s never ending. When you see women like Marie Osmond and Jennifer Hudson showing off the weight they’ve lost – they look terrific – but they are not done! You have only to look at Oprah, and Kirsty Alley to see that. I realize that if I hadn’t been overweight and at times, very obese, then perhaps the arthritis of my spine and knees wouldn’t have been so severe. But it is. I use a mobility scooter. It took me three years to get disability in the first place; I eventually had to hire a lawyer. In the beginning, I used a manual wheelchair, but I hated it with a fiery passion. It was too painful for me to wheel it myself; my husband or good friends had to push all 350 pounds of me around. I felt utterly handicapped and I never wanted to use it. I hated it. But I was deemed crippled enough to require a scooter. It was a candy apple red Pride Maxima (Heavy Duty, of course).
Here’s the thing. In the wheelchair I felt completely handicapped; useless – invisible. But in the scooter, I feel free. It’s a wonderful feeling, too!
In 2007, I went to a vascular surgeon to see why my feet looked and felt like rose-colored blocks of wood. Every time my own doctor looked at them, she worried more, so she sent me to see the surgeon. They weighed me on one of those “down to the depot” scales. It was this huge, triangular apparatus that you had to climb up on. I felt like a semi at a truck weighing station. Too my everlasting horror, I weighed in at 340 pounds. It was the most I had ever weighed. All I could do was weep. My husband, who is always there with me and for me, held my hand when we went in to see the doctor. Inside the examination room, I realized that I’d been sandbagged. He was a vascular surgeon, but his partner was a bariatric surgeon. My own doctor and I had discussed this many times over the last ten years. I was afraid of weight loss surgery. That was three years ago and I still am. However, I don’t weigh 340 pounds any more. I weigh about 270 pounds. I can’t walk much or stand in one place for more than a few minutes without pain, so it’s hard for me to exercise very much. I am better with my diet than I used to be. I still eat things I shouldn’t, but not to the truly ridiculous amounts I used to. I have diabetes, buy my blood sugar is well under control. I have cataracts and glaucoma in both my eyes, as a complication of diabetes. And I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression, as well, so I am truly disabled. I don’t like it, but we all play the cards we’re dealt, right?
I’m not whining about this – it’s just that some of us who are using those mobility scooters, overweight, obese, young, middle-aged or elderly, male or female – if our doctors and Medicare and our insurance companies think we deserve to use a mobility scooter or power chair – we do. That should be that.
If you know anyone who is disabled, ask them if it was difficult to get disability for a physical problem. All those undergoing dialysis because of end stage kidney disease get disability immediately, as do those who suffer from ALS, (Lou Gherig Disease). They are fatal illnesses. It seems to be easier to get disability for mental and emotional illnesses, but I think that’s a good thing.
If the person who complained about her taxes going to purchase mobility scooters and other things for obese people asked a disabled person what they had to go through to get the Government to allow them disability, maybe she would learn something. One of the final comments she posted was that she thought that maybe Medicare and insurance companies should stop giving out “free” scooters and power chairs to the fat slobs who use them, and begin handing out treadmills and diets.
Nice.
You never know why that person you see in a wheelchair or using a parking permit for a handicapped space needs that scooter.
I’m just sayin’.
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