Oct 29

Wearing Your Disability Costume

file3821237209018Halloween, the time of year when people all around the country are busy planning their elaborate costumes.  Wearing a costume is an opportunity to dress up like someone else.  A costume is also used as a way to get noticed.  Essentially a costume is a disguise of who you really are.  I wear my costume all year round.  My costume is what gets me the second looks, the stares and what I am often remembered for.  My costume is my crutches that represents my disability, not the person I am.

I never really thought about this in the terms of a costume, but found this analogy fascinating when I read the following piece written by Jon Bateman.   He wrote a piece entitled “12 Ways to Living with Confidence despite your Disability”.  This was his fourth way.

“Understand that you’re in a costume all the time, but your disability is not who you are, it has much to do with your soul as your hair color.  Unfortunately, people may project uncertainty, emotional pain, anger and sadness onto you simply because you appear to be in a situation they fear and do not understand.  So, like many people, they will cope by ridiculing or trying to ignore what they fear.  Do not be intimidated by this even if people try to avoid you or try to silence you because you are seeking things that make them feel uncomfortable.”

I couldn’t agree more with everything he wrote, I face it every day. However I am going to focus on how to shed the disability costume.   As a full time crutch user, I am noticed everywhere I go, not for who I am, but for being the guy with the crutches. The crutches catch people’s eyes, they get me remembered and make people uncomfortable.  My costume is the first impression I make.  I can’t change this, so all I can do is find ways to get people to see past the costume.

My crutches have much to do with who I am as my balding hair, but it can be difficult to not let them define me.  Every day when I press the elevator button at my office building, I know what to expect.  The doors pops open and the unrespecting souls on the elevator, see me standing there on my crutches, they express a moment of panic and discomfort.  Some quickly scramble to hold the doors open, others nervously dance around making extra space, what they all do is quickly move their eyes down my legs, trying to figure out what is wrong with me.  In the meantime, I don’t require any of this to enter the elevator, I need nothing more from them than anyone else would need, common courtesy, so why do I get this reaction, I think it is hard for people to understand that I can live a normal happy life having to use crutches every day, it is assumed that I am incapable.  This makes them feel sorry for me and there reaction is to either ignore it or over compensate with assistance, so yes it is difficult not to let my disability define me.

The best way I have found to overcome this is to make people comfortable with my disability, it is somewhat reverse psychology, if I find a way to acknowledge my crutches, suddenly people become more comfortable.

I have released the big white elephant from the room, maybe, I make a joke about the crutches, I have even been known to call myself the guy with the crutches, really I simply try to find a way to let them know that I am okay with them and so they should, when given a chance they are always surprised by what I can accomplish.  My saying “Hey not bad for a guy on crutches” will evoke a chuckle that breaks the ice.  People are uncomfortable because it is unknown to them and they are afraid to offend.  I really do find that when I don’t try to ignore my disability people become more comfortable, its then I shed the costume, engage them in conversation and they see me for who I really am, if you have a disability, yes, in Jon Bateman’s words understand that you’re in a costume all the time, but also understand that is not who you are, be open about your disability and show the world the real you.

 

 

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Oct 15

Handicap Parking

eretI am not under the assumption that just because I have a disability I should get special treatment, so when I enter a parking lot I scan the available spaces and then decide whether I feel I need the handicap space.  If there is another spot, not miles away, I park in it figuring that someone else might need the space more than me.  My feeling is that I don’t think I deserve to have my life made easier than someone without a disability, but that any accommodations I use allow me to have the same level of convenience as anyone else.  My crutches improve the quality of my life tremendously, but no matter how you slice it having two healthy legs makes life easier.  This is why I am angered when having to constantly fight a battle when I need to use handicap parking.

When I began classes at the local community college, the first day I studied the lay of the land, the parking lot and the main door to the building where my classes would be held.  I quickly ascertained that I would need to utilize the closest handicap spot.  Even by using that spot the walk to the door was a good distance uphill, plus I would need to do a considerable amount of walking once in the building.  No sooner than I had parked, the parking security Gestapo pulled up beside my car to bust me for using a handicap spot.  After presenting him my tag he informed me that it was handicap parking for faculty only.  He told me I could park that day, after seeing me pull the crutches out of my car, but from then on I would need to park in the student lot’s handicap parking spots.  Later that day, I looked up the law for handicap parking.  It states handicap parking should be the closest possible spaces to the main entrance of a building, and said nothing about faculty and non-faculty handicap parking.  The next day I pull into a handicap spot in a bank of about ten handicap marked spaces, nothing around them stating faculty only.  I park in that bank of spaces for several days until one day I come out of the building to see the Gestapo’s vehicle parked directly behind me.  Once again he was there waiting to inform me I was in the faculty lot.  He then points to the student lot and tells me that handicap spot is closer to a door.  Yes, he was correct, but the door was in two buildings over from the building my classes were in.  I gave up and used the spot he directed me to.  The last thing I was going to do is argue with this jerk who for some reason wanted to make things difficult for me.  After all, I wasn’t looking to make my life easier, I just wanted it equally as convenient as anyone else.

Every day for two and half months this guy watched me park and walk into the building on crutches.  Then he watched me return to my car on crutches after classes.  He knew who I was, he knew my vehicle and knew I had a handicap parking permit.  Most importantly he knew I needed the parking spot.  After watching me all this time, the day I forgot to remove the tag from my console and hang it on the rearview mirror, the bastard calls the city police and I get ticketed for illegally parking in a handicap spot without a tag.  I know he was the one who reported me because I was walking to my car just as the police placed the ticket on my windshield while Mr. Parking Security guy stood talking with him.  The city dismissed the ticket, but that’s not the point.  Instead of helping me out, parking security guy made my life more difficult.

Now I’ve started a new job, the parking situation is less than ideal.  Employees have to park off site and take city buses to the building.  Not pleasant for anyone, but for someone using crutches it’s very difficult.  Every morning and afternoon, climbing on and off a bus while hundreds of people push through is not only difficult but dangerous.  So, I inquire about handicap parking.  I explain that I am not opposed to doing some walking, however I felt climbing on and off the bus would be too difficult.  Once again, I am not trying to have my life easier – just equal to everyone else.  For me having to do some walking equals the inconvenience of others taking the bus.  I get no arguments; they completely understand but I have to jump through hoops to get to park in handicap parking.  If I could jump hoops I wouldn’t need the handicap parking.  Kidding of course – I didn’t have to physically jump through hoops, but I did have to track down doctors to get all kinds of paperwork filled out and get documentation to prove I need the parking permit.  If you ever had to get paperwork like this filled out by a busy surgeon, while working full time, you know what a lengthy process it can be.

After paying ten dollars a day to park in a visitor’s parking lot at a walkable distance, they issue me a temporary pass.  Wonderful, however it is only for a week – leaving me one week to get the paperwork back from my doctor who won’t be back in his office until the day my temporary pass is up.

I did eventually receive my permit allowing me to park in the garage under the building. It just never ceases to amaze me all the extra red tape that someone with physical limitations needs to go through just to have reasonable parking.  Employees without physical limitations fill out one form and have parking immediately, but in the end it took a few weeks for me to secure a parking permit, and all the while the ten dollars a day quickly added up.  Oh yeah, I have double the amount taken out of my pay check because I have preferred parking.

I would rather have two good legs to walk on than preferred parking.

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Sep 22

“Life is Good”

Job hunting is dismal enough in this job market when you are a 48-year-old man who uses crutches to walk.  A few weeks ago, while sitting in the lobby of a large company during a hiring open house, a woman who was sitting on the opposite side of the room felt so uncomfortable with my crutches that she was compelled to get up, cross the room and say to me, “I watched you walk from your car into the building and you did it beautifully.”  For as many times as people have made comments to me about my crutches, I still sat there blown away.   My response, “Uhhhh, thanks I guess.”  What else could I really say?

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of crutch comments I have received over the past five years. I never tried to hide the crutches or avoid talking about them, and I now cope by writing about crutches.  However, when you are going through multiple leg surgeries, endless recoveries on crutches or transitioning to using crutches full time, the last thing you need is comments about the crutches every place you go.

I have an extensive collection of “Life is good” tee shirts, short sleeve and long sleeve.  I just love them.  I love the sayings, the graphics and most of all, the comfort.  Needless to say, they have become a staple gift for my kids and wife to buy me.  Before my leg debacle, I would wear my “Life is Good” tees every Friday to work.  Fridays were dress-down days at the elementary school where I taught, so every Friday I wore a “Life is Good” tee and jeans.  The first thing the kids looked for on Friday morning was my tee shirt.  They loved reading the sayings and often would try to guess which one I was wearing.  Not only did the kids do this, every Friday morning I would have faculty members poking their heads in my room to see what “Life is good” shirt I was wearing.  Disappointingly, “Life is good” quickly became “Life is Annoying.”

Once I was using crutches, my “Life is Good” tees were even more valuable than ever, mostly for their comfort.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that people were mocking them.  It never occurred to me that people would make any connection between my “Life is Good” tees and my physical situation.  However, completely unaware of the shirt I was wearing, a waitress at the local diner says, “Life is good? If I had a broken leg, I wouldn’t be wearing a shirt that says Life is Good.”  Needless to say, this was the most popular reaction I got from people everywhere I went while wearing a “Life is good” shirt while using crutches. “Life doesn’t look good to me.”  “Look, that guy has a broken leg and is still wearing a shirt that says Life is Good.”  It went on and on.   I soon found myself only wearing the ones that said things other than “Life is good.”

Even without the shirts, the comments kept flying over the years, and still do on occasion.  Here are some of my favorites:

With a look of shock on their face, “Darryl, you’re still on crutches?”   With this one, I was often tempted to gasp and say, “No really, I didn’t know that, thanks for telling me!”

“Still dragging those old crutches around with you?”  The response I was thinking, “Still spouting out those stupid comments?”

While being introduced to someone, the introducer says, “This is Darryl, I don’t think I have ever known him not on crutches.”  I am thinking, “REALLY, that’s all you have to say about me?”

A guy who I hadn’t seen in several months saw my crutches leaning against the wall behind me and he says, “Darryl, are those still your crutches?  I would think by now you would have custom mahogany crutches.”  I am thinking, “If it would get you to shut up, they might be worth it.”

This one’s not necessarily about crutches, but a classic.  “Darryl, don’t worry, soon you will be in physical therapy, get your range of motion back and return to all your activities.”  This is after they ask what happened and I tell them I had my ankle joint fused.  I wanted to scream, “Get a dictionary and look up what the word ‘fused’ means.”

An innocent favorite of mine; I pass two first graders in the hall and one says to the other, “Look, there’s the broken teacher with the leg.”  This one just made me smile.

These were just a small sample of the amount of comments I have received over the years.

So, while preparing to go into my sixth surgery, I did Google search for some appropriate tee shirts I might wear.  My search came up with nothing, but here are some sayings I had in mind.  “I am on crutches, deal with it!”  “No crutch comments, please!”

What do you think about my tee shirt ideas?

Captureshirts

I think I speak for anyone who uses crutches full time or has used them long-term.  Greet us as you would greet anyone else.  Our crutches allow us to get around.  They don’t define who we are.  As for my “Life is Good” shirts, I am still building my collection and wearing them, crutches and all, because “life is good!”

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Sep 17

The payoff for Hard Work and Determination

Last week, I doubted whether a good attitude and hard work had really paid off.   After receiving the news that one job that had my name all over it was given to someone else, it was difficult for me to see the light at the end of the tunnel.   Quite frankly, I wasn’t even sure there was a light.

Six years ago I had achieved what everyone dreams of, a career they love.  I was blissfully teaching my third grade class of students and couldn’t imagine ever doing anything else.  My life was not perfect or problem free, but I was experiencing the same everyday issues that everyone faces.  I had three healthy kids, a loving wife, a career and and a healthy active life.   Life was good!

Who knew that six years later, I would have endured six painful life-changing ankle surgeries, all as a result of a facture in my ankle.  My teaching career was over and I faced a life of using crutches to walk.

Losing my freedom of mobility was hard enough, without losing my career as well.  At first I struggled to continue to work.  Two of the surgeries I worked around the school year, using the summer breaks, and one surgery I had done during the school year, taking a ten week leave.  Most of these three school years, I relied heavily on crutches to get through my work days.  Not ideal, but I made it work; however, in an economic time of massive teacher layoffs and an unsympathetic school administration, I lost my job.  The guy who had been through multiple ankle surgeries and was always on crutches was the first to go.

Over the next few years, I underwent three more ankle surgeries and I lost count of the endless time I spent on crutches, in the end concluding that any amount of time standing or walking was undoable without the aid of crutches.  My dream of teaching hadn’t died.  I strongly felt that I could teach using crutches and making other accommodations in the classroom.   After a zillion applications and some unsuccessful interviews, I concluded that teaching was no longer in the cards for me.  The colleges were pumping out hundreds of successful new teachers for very few positions, and my age and disability were against me.  In reality, teaching is a very busy job requiring constant moving around the building and classroom.   I needed a job that required far less walking and that would be more conducive to using crutches.

A huge part of the process of rebuilding my life was training for a new career as a 47-year-old man with a disability requiring the use of crutches.  Where do you even begin?  I had become fascinated with radiology and the human anatomy through all of my research and surgeries, so began looking into careers in the medical field that wouldn’t require medical school, in the end choosing a one year certificate program to become a medical coder.   It wasn’t that I felt sitting in a cubical in the dungeons of hospital coding medical records was the job for me.  My plan was to see where it would lead me.

It lead me to an internship at the State Department of Health, where I stumbled upon an open position which had very little to do with medical coding.  I have learned in life that when things seem to just fall into place, they are meant to be, and when things don’t seem to fall into place, they are not meant to be. Yes, hard work is essential, but if you are just spinning your wheels, it probably wasn’t meant to be.   With this open position, everything had fallen into place.  This is the reason why learning that I didn’t get the job threw me for a loop.  I found myself desperately trying to discover the reason, or a lesson in the fact that for two months, everything pointed to my getting this job, and then it was pulled away.  At the time, no sensible reason came to mind.

My attitude was definitely anything but good for a few days.  I then worked very hard to change and find a way to improve my attitude.   It was not easy and I suffered with it for over a week.  I went to work applying for a minimum of two jobs per day, and I racked my brains for career possibilities.   Every time I felt myself slipping into negativity, I would go for a bike ride, work out or find something to keep me  busy.  Each day my attitude improved and the job rejection slowly faded.  A week later, I even found myself telling my therapist I was surprised I felt as good as I did.

A week-and-a-half afterwards, I left the gym, hopped on my bike and was headed for home.  It was about 9:30 am.  My phone rang.  After stopping my bike and answering the phone, I heard, “Are you still looking for a job?”  It was the Department of Health calling to offer me the position after all.  The person they had offered the job to had declined and taken a different position.

In the end, was this a test for me?  Was it a test to see just how much I had healed?  I don’t know.  If I had continued on with my original thoughts of despair and negative feelings after hanging up from the rejection call, would it have worked out this way?  Maybe I passed the test by pulling myself together and pushing forward with determination.  It all paid off in the end.

Another goal in taking back my life was accomplished!!!  Follow me to see what’s next!

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Sep 03

Lesson Learned!

I leaned the old lesson from Aesop’s Fable “The Milkmaid and Her Pail”:  “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch” last week.

In my plight to regain my life I needed to find a way to successfully obtain employment.  One year ago, feeling like I had nowhere to turn, I enrolled in a program at a local community college.   The program was to become a certified medical coder.  I had not been looking to become a medical coder, however after spending so much time wrapped up in my own medical issues, I had looked into other medical related careers.  So standing in my kitchen reading a flier from a community college to become a medical coder, which came in that day’s mail, I went to my computer and registered.

I had two reasons for enrolling in the program.  One, I couldn’t bear the thought of another year going by without me doing something about getting on with my life.  Two, what I felt I needed to obtain a job was a break, foot in the door so to speak.  This program was one year long and finished with a 98 hour internship.   Filling my two requirements.

A week later I found myself, a 47 year old man with a masters degree, sitting among 30 other students of all ages with little more than high school diplomas.  The most difficult part was, I was being spoken to in a most demeaning way by a woman in her mid-forties, seven months pregnant, with no more education or knowledge about medical coding then I had.   This women, with her sloppy, unprofessional appearance, would be teaching seven of the classes I would need to take over the next year.

Needless to say, I had to suck up a lot of pride to sit and be ridiculed by this woman. She was in major defensive mode to cover for her lack of knowledge.  As she, I am sure, wasn’t expecting to have a smartass like me questioning her every move in the class.  Most dropped out as only seven of the original thirty completed the year.  I stuck it out for the internship, in my mind the only chance I had to gain on the job experience needed to achieve employment.

June 3rd I was off to my first day of the internship.  Going in, my plan was to work hard and leave with a current reference and some job related experience.  Ironically, the third day on the internship I learn of an open position.  I leapt into action and inquired how I could get the job.  To my surprise my inquiry was welcomed with “this might be a case of being in the right place at the right time”.  In the days to follow I am questioned and put through constant casual interviewing.   I overhear conversation after conversation (not hard to do, they were 5 feet from my cubical) about the position and my getting the position.   It is then told to me that they need to post and interview a few other people before offering the job to me.  However, they were only going to interview three or four candidates, the minimum number they were required to.  Wow, this is finally my break, I am thinking. Now don’t get me wrong, all the time I kept telling myself this is too good to be true.  I even continued attending hiring open houses, job fairs and applying to every job I could find, but everything pointed to me being a shoo in for this job.  The job posting was customized to my education.  I was personally delivered the posting and told to make sure I applied that night, coworkers telling me there was no way I wouldn’t get the job.  I left the internship with a glowing evaluation that could not have been better.  Unfortunately, in my mind I already had this job and how could I not, everything lead me to believe the job would be mine.

The process was long to get from the vacancy to interviewing, in all a two month period.  I went for the interview, which I did not take lightly, preparing for days leading up to it.  At the interview again totally got the impression it was just a formality.  Left feeling as confident as ever that on Monday I would get the job offer.

For me this was more than a job or a paycheck, this was much, much more.  This job would mean I still had the ability to provide for my family, it would tell me that I would be all right, I could overcome the disability, live with it and still have a successful life.  Getting the job offer would prove with some hard work, perseverance and a good attitude I could accomplish anything.

Monday came and no phone call, Tuesday no phone call, Wednesday no call, by Thursday I was dreading finding the rejection note in my email or mailbox.  The next week came and went no phone call, no email, and no letter in the mail box.  Obviously this made me nervous and in my mind I tried to start processing the possibility of not getting the job.  However, this wasn’t just an interview that went really well, it was two months of everything falling in to place.  How could I not be offered the job?  Could life really be that cruel, could this all have been a joke, another kick in the ass?

Two weeks and four days later my phone rang.  When I saw the number I was overtaken with excitement, within seconds I would have a job, I could contribute to the family income, give my family news they could be proud of me for and I would have achieved a new career as a 48 year old man with a physical disability.  I hadn’t accounted for bad news coming in the form of a phone call.  Shockingly in minutes I hear, I have been putting this call off because we are not offering you the position.  At that moment I literally felt all life and hope drain out of my body.  By the time I put the phone down I couldn’t breathe, my heart was beating out of control and I honestly didn’t know where to go or what to do.  For two months I lived on this high of getting this job, everything pointed to my getting the job, I had even begun to plan my life around the job and within seconds it was all gone.  Back to the jobless, angry, crippled man.  Once again life knocked me on my ass.

For two days I just existed, an empty shell, emotionless, paralyzed to move forward.  It took over a year to lose my anger so I could move on and here I was with new anger.  So what do I do?  I could not stand the thought of living with this anger again, so I looked to my inspiration, the people in the books I read.  What would they do, they all had major setbacks that defeated them.  They all picked themselves up and pushed forward, so that is what I have to do.

One of the things that bothered me about not getting the job was I felt this website, the blog, was a farce.  To continue would be hypocritical, after all I wasn’t successful, so how could I be preaching all about overcoming a disability.  During those two days my plan was to kill the website, but then it hit me.  One of the best ways I found to overcome my anger was to write.  For some reason as I write I feel better.  It helps me make sense of the situation, helping me release my anger.  Plus this is my journey to recovery, not a fairytale ending.

So the post that was to be bragging about being successful and obtaining a job, is in fact another lesson, a detour in the road to recovery.  I not only spent the next few days writing this post, l combed the job ads, wrote a dozen cover letters applying to jobs.  It isn’t magic and it will take me some time but I will find my way around the detour, job or no job.

Remember, “Don’t count you chickens before they hatch” even if it seems like a sure thing!

 

 

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