The fall we all knew was coming
The Rocinante is a bit of a beast. She bucks and threatens to throw me all the time. I have had to become careful with how I move her, not putting too much power into the wheels, keeping my form forward to manage the balance when pushing, and refraining from going too fast.
Today I was wheeling downhill in the Roci, coasting at around jogging speed. Ok maybe running speed. Too fast. The pavement I was on became bumpy, poorly maintained. I had a couple of near misses, little potholes and ridges narrowly avoided. The thought crossed my mind that I was in some danger and I had just enough time to reassure myself before a broken drain found me.
The drain had sunk over time into the pavement, deep enough for a couple of inches of lip to present between the corner and the pavement around it, enough to catch one of my front wheels. I hit it at top speed. The Rocinante stopped dead instantly and inertia carried me into the air. I came crashing to the ground on my hip and elbow and skidded and rolled to a stop, the Roci tumbling nearby.
I lay there on the concrete for several moments staring up at the sky. I’d hit my head, my side flared with pain, my elbow. I reached out to the Roci, a hand to her to ensure she was safe. I righted her and lifted myself back into the pilot seat. I rested us both against a nearby tree and set about checking my injuries.
One of the big challenges with weakness and numbness, with spinal cord damage generally, is that injuries aren’t immediately apprarent. I used my hands to feel down my elbow. No break but a superficial injury, I’d skidded against the concrete and my arm had taken the brunt. It wasn’t serious. I felt down my hip and my leg and there was a deeper injury there. My hip had impacted the ground hard, but there was no break that I could find.
I hurt a lot but somehow I wasn’t seriously injured.
I swallow the shock of what has just happened, try to calm my nerves. I can’t risk the confidence I have spent so long building so without serious injury I pick up the pace again and continue my workout.
I tell my brother and friends about my trips down the middle of quiet roads and they all express some concern about me using roads in this way. I understand that cars are pretty dangerous to wheel around. But pavements are murderous. Councils have woefully, negligently, allowed pavements to become truly impassable by wheelchair. Worse, they hide traps like the one that floored me.
There’s one pavement I wheel down, the road is too busy, and I’m on it for no longer than 100 metres. I can tell you that there are at least 12 holes in this pavement deep enough to throw me from the chair. When you’re walking a trip is hazardous but in a chair if you hit one of these obstacles the chair stops and you don’t. You’re flying forward from a seated position with weak legs. There’s no way to save yourself, and you inevitably crash to the ground and skid to a halt on the concrete.
Councils. Do better. You have a responsibility to maintain the pavements so that wheelchair users can use them without being at risk. Every time I’m out in the chair I am at risk of serious injury and it is no wonder I never see people out in their wheelchairs. Because the world is essentially uninhabitable.
I’m strong now, I work out regularly, and I can push the Roci well over 5k in a single run, and that’s the only reason I’m not more injured. But I am angry. Angry for all of my disabled kin, angry for myself unable to be fully free because the world was clearly not made for me.
It does something to you to have the world face you with the clear truth that it wasn’t made for you. It’s worse than that. It is made in a way that actively excludes you. And it doesn’t care. There is no outrage. There is ‘poor you’ and pity and ‘do you need help?’. But it doesn’t change. I fall and I report the problem and they’re busy and they’ll get to it but it isn’t a priority for them. Life threatening to me, barely an inconvenience to most, and to the council it barely registers as a problem.
But the fire this injustice ignites within me just makes me more determined. I’m going to get stronger, going to learn from each failure, each fall, and there will be more falls. I’ll learn to navigate the cobbles, to see dangers coming, to urgently change course at speed to avoid them. I’ll become better at falling, at tucking and rolling to avoid serious injury.
The world wasn’t made for me. It actively excludes me. But the world has always tried to exclude me. And like always I’ll make myself what I need to become to navigate it.
Getting my ass kicked is not surprising, it’s just the cost of the fight. Tomorrow we rest and recover…