New Chair Day

Yesterday was a glorious day, not just because the weather was perfect and I got to spend an hour and a half reading in the sun, but because yesterday was the day most wheelchair users look forward to the way kids look forward to Christmas. Yesterday was new chair day.

Those of you who do not use chairs may not really understand the significance of this day; it is not just the chair. New chair day marks the end of a struggle. See getting a new chair is not as simple as getting a new car. Getting a new wheelchair can take up to a year and a half. I was shocked when I had to wait just under four months for mine that might be a record.

It’s not the ordering, the shipping or even the building that takes so long, it’s the paperwork. See first, you need to have a doctor write you a prescription for a wheelchair evaluation, that evaluation then has to be approved by insurance, then you have to go to the evaluation where a Physical Therapist and a Wheelchair Tech Guru (not their official title) evaluate you and decide which chair/parts meet your needs then you have to wait of insurance approval.

Insurance has to approve everything, from the type of chair, to the footrest, the backrest the weight of the chair every piece must be individually approved. Normally, I have not had to deal with insurance. This time, when they couldn’t get a hold of my doctor, they called me. I found out something interesting. Insurance (at least mine anyway) will not approve any part of a chair unless you need that part inside your home. For instance, if you need a lightweight chair because you have trouble pushing up hills or lifting it into your car. It will not be approved because you don’t have hills or cars inside your home. (Garages do not count.)

I find it interesting that how people function outside of the home is of no interest to the insurance company. Does anyone have any insight on this? I can see why they wouldn’t want to give someone something that was purely for recreation; (although, I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that decision) but it seems to me that getting to and from work or even the doctor’s office safely would be a priority. Apparently, for whatever reason, it’s not. Only what you do in the house matters.

The insurance guy that called me was awesome. He is very good at his job and was just as baffled by the policy as I was. He had no answers but was glad that he got to talk to me, because as it turns out, everything we requested for the chair had a function inside my home, but if he hadn’t spent an hour on the phone with me asking me questions, my chair might not have been approved at all! I guess on paper it didn’t seem justified.  I am so grateful to that insurance guy, who took the extra step to get a hold of me. Who took the time and the patience to go through every discrepancy with me and did it with kindness, understanding and humor. I wish I remembered his name. Here’s to you awesome insurance guy, thanks for making me a little less bitter.

Once the chair is approved, it is shipped and put together and then you make another appointment for a fitting and adjustments. After that, it’s yours.

Thanks to that insurance guy, I picked it up yesterday. It looks pretty similar to my old chair, but looks can be deceiving. My back, (which was the man reason for the new chair) does not hurt all day anymore!!! I am more comfortable and sitting up straighter, plus the new chair is easier to fold and easier to maneuver. Really the difference is me. Everyone is saying how much better I look.

Do you see the difference?

The new chair is one where I am in orange. Please ignore the boxes behind me on my wedding day, we were waiting to walk down the aisle. I posted it so you guys can see that even when I tried I could not get up nice and straight in the old chair. (No wonder my back hurt.) The new chair back wraps around my sides to hold me up. My shoulders are still never even but they are much improved. I self took the pictures of the new chair so I am still slouching a bit but my natural positioning (where I am without trying) is much better.

This is only day two, so I am sure some adjustments will be made. But I am super excited. Tom and I are going back up north with friends for Memorial Day and hitting up some of the attractions we missed on our honeymoon and I can’t wait to see the difference it makes.

No Wheelchair Allowed? Apparently Some People Still Haven't Heard of the ADA.

This whole wedding experience has been a bit of a surprise for me. I expected to come across a few more challenges as I progressed in planning my wedding. Does that make me cynical? As it turns out though, I have been pleasantly surprised by everyone’s excitement and willingness to help however they can and have had nothing but positive experiences, especially with my dress. I became even more grateful for this when I saw a post made by one of my friends on facebook. She had been shopping for her best friend’s wedding dress when she was told that she could not enter the store because of her wheelchair. The story was picked up quickly by the local television station.



Here is the full story.


I can’t believe it. I mean, first of all you can see from the photo that the front of Kim Kriner's Bridal Boutique  is barrier free, which means that a person in a wheelchair can, in fact, enter the store. But someone has set it up so that the aisles are narrow making it hard for people in wheelchairs to get around. Does this person make an attempt to fix this, since you know, it’s the law? No, he or she puts a sign on the door and has staff tell people in wheelchairs to leave when they try to enter.


The girls entered anyway, only to be told that Stephanie could not enter the dressing room because her wheels might dirty the dresses. The staff that told them this was actually surprised when the girls got angry. See they have a policy about no shoes in the dressing room and wheels and shoes are the same thing, right?


My question is this. What if Stephanie had been the bride?


Clearly this store has never even considered the fact that someone with a disability might need to use their services. Cleary, they had no intentions of even trying to make accommodations for this before today.
All I can say is thank you Stephanie for going in anyway, for making this story public and for not letting this happen to someone else; someone like me, whose biggest fear was being told that she could not try on dresses because of her wheelchair.


And thank you to Mimi's Bridal Boutique and David's Bridal in Ann Arbor for seeing a bride and not a wheelchair, for making me feel comfortable and for helping me find my dress.

To Walk or Not To Walk? Getting Down That Infamous Aisle

“So how are you going to get down The Aisle?” This is the one question that has been asked by nearly everyone that hears about the wedding. Thinking about it, it is sort of a weird question. Definitely not a question most brides hear, but then again it’s not something most brides have to think about either.


And the thing is; I do have options, so the question isn’t that weird. Even though I do have a disability, I am lucky enough to be able to walk with the assistance of a mobility aid and have been known to use a number of different things to get around: crutches, which I use for short distances, a walker which I use for longer distances and a wheelchair, which I used for even longer distances. Now, The Aisle is a pretty short walk, and you might assume that I easily came to the conclusion that I would use my crutches, for this most important of walks. But it was not a decision I came to lightly.


See, I can walk, but that doesn’t make me a fan. Walking is not just a pain in the ass logistically, it's a literal pain. My feet, ankles, knees and hips have all on one occasion or another decided to rebel sending me sprawling and I would prefer, NOT to make that kind of an entrance on my wedding day. Also, I get nervous when I know people are looking at me, which I know seems odd because people are always staring, but that’s different. At weddings people REALLY look at you, and my nerves get to me so bad that I have used a wheelchair during almost every other wedding experience.


But the wheelchair has its own set of complications. I would have to make sure that the aisle is wide enough for me to get down the aisle with someone walking beside me, in many weddings I have been in where I used a chair, the person walking with me had to walk behind me because the width of the aisle was not wide enough


I also didn’t want to be looking up at Tom during the whole ceremony. Or have him have to stoop down to deliver the big smooch. I feel like using my chair would create a barrier during a moment where we are supposed to be very close to one another.


Most of my friends with disabilities assumed off the bat that I would walk, simply because I had the choice. Those that don’t know me well assumed the wheelchair and my closest friends were just curious what my decision would be.


I will say that from the start, I felt a lot of pressure to walk down the aisle as opposed to using my wheelchair, although I cannot remember actually being pressured by any one person. I am not sure where it came from; I just remember having this overwhelming feeling that that is what people expected me to do.


When I was little, in the eighties and early nineties the most important thing in the world was to walk. It was the one thing that my entire life circled around; I was even pulled out of classes regularly to receive physical therapy. There were surgeries, braces, walkers, crutches, canes; every effort put forth was put towards walking. By walking I do not mean “better mobility” but rather just walking. It didn’t matter if I was slow, or if walking was exhausting or even painful, as long as I was upright and putting on foot in front of the other, I was a success.


I never really agreed with this line of logic, and felt no guilt upon getting my first wheelchair in tenth grade. In fact, I was giddy at the freedom it provided me, but there are others in my generation who are still taking those slow agonizing steps and calling it independence. Maybe it is their whispering voices I hear in my mind, maybe it is my parents', or my physical therapist's, or those surgeons' all who wanted nothing more than to see me walk. Or maybe it’s me.


I ultimately came to the decision I will in fact be walking down the aisle. My daddy will be supporting one side and a crutch supporting the other. God willing, I will make it down the aisle without performing any swan dives, however, my wheelchair will be there also, just out of view, incase my brain and body are not on the same page.