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Flying High

Soon after I started following transabled.org, Claire posted "Weirdness at the Airport". "Wow!" I thought, "This woman has the balls of a mountain goat!" (Umm… ovaries maybe). There she was, not only...

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Standing Up To Mum, One Discussion At A Time

As I’ve said before I’ve been spending time with Gwen talking and praying about stuff. I’d told Gwen right at my first meeting with her about my BIID and she made sure I knew that she understood what...

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Dilemma

Being a Catholic wife with BIID poses some serious dilemma: how can I be a good wife when I know that my wheeling is causing so much pain to my husband? Most of the time I am at peace with my wheeling....

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A Year of Wheeling

With hindsight, my resistance to becoming a majority time wheeler seems quaint. Why would I have resisted a change in my life which has proved to be so beneficial? As with a lot of things, the answer...

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Still Wheeling

My BIID has been at around 2 out of 10 badness for the last two or three months. So why do I still wheel? Wouldn’t it be easier both for me and my marriage to stop wheeling when my BIID is quiet? I...

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Is It Moral (Or Ethical) For Us To Walk At All?

I spent most of the day doing chores, and walking to do these chores. At some point during the day I was reminded of a conversation I had with a woman who has osteogenesis imperfecta, and knows about...

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Consistent Presentation

My disability presentation has evolved over the last two years. It has lacked consistency, both over time and also between different groups of people. I’m not sure I could have done it any other way. I...

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GP Visit Number Nine

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, Chloe used to experience enormous psychological stress when seeing a physician. Now, at her ninth GP visit in a wheelchair, she finds it both relaxing and...

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A Change in Perspective

Almost two years ago I included BIID in my laundry list of insanities. I mean, you have to be insane to actually want to be paralysed, right? I said then that BIID feels like a mental illness; but it’s...

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At Odds

I may soon meet up with a wheeler I know through the Internet. He knows about my BIID. He accepts it with no questions. He asked me if I would be wheeling also when we met. Well now. That is a poser....

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Paraplegia Sucks!

Most of us try to educate ourselves about the impairment that we need. A great deal of information can be found in books and on the internet. Recently, things became more up close and personal for me...

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Living, not thinking

Lately it’s been difficult for me to come up with a topic for my posts. Why? Because I don’t think much about BIID lately. I don’t philosophise about the reasons why I should or should not wheel. Nor...

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Don’t Take My Precious Moments Away

Two of my girlfriends and I are planning to do Disability 101 presentations in public schools. We are brainstorming now – what is the message we really want to get across, what would be the different...

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Wheelchair Hike Number One

I’ve already had a year or so of interspersing my regular hikes with ones using a leg brace and crutch. It seems that there was a slightly greater psychological hurdle in getting to my first wheelchair...

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A Day in KAFOs

We needed to get our car fixed, so I wasn’t going in to work last Friday. Alicia and I would be spending most of the day together, and it was a nice opportunity to satisfy my occasional desire to wear...

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Musical Paralysis

My friend Dave, who accompanied me on my first wheelchair hike, plays viola for the Salt Lake Symphony Orchestra. He was able to get us tickets for yesterday’s "Schumann Celebration". I was not...

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Don’t Take The Basket Away!

One of the joys of wheeling is going really fast on flat floors, like in grocery stores. One of the down times is when a store clerk needs to feel very important and won’t allow me to take a shopping...

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Peace of Mind

Phil asked me recently "Dear Chloe, how have you found peace of mind and this attitude [about BIID]?" In the thirty months or so that I have been following transabled.org I have gone from feeling...

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My Muscle Spasms

I have two entirely separate conditions, both of which are associated with muscle spasms: fibromyalgia and the minor SCI. As a child I had no idea that paralysis would come with muscle spasms, so I...

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Sarah’s Birthday Party

My friends mean more to me than I could possibly express in words. Sarah was the person who saved my life. Sarah was the first person after Alicia that I trusted to see me wearing leg braces. Sarah had...

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At the Museum

My friend Dave came back from five years in Japan some months ago. We are making up for lost time by spending a good part of a day together every week. Last week Dave suggested that we spend the...

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I Love My Kids

My two children, both boys, are 17 and 23 years old. Okay, I guess they’re not really children any more! They live in another state, but they came to spend some time with us over the holidays. Day 1...

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It’s a Small World After All

Alicia, myself and a friend headed south, with three suitcases and a wheelchair packed in our friend’s car. Here described are my eight days of wheelchair adventures. Las Vegas Las Vegas is a...

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Wheelchair Maintenance

After I purchased my first wheelchair, I kept it maintained, cleaned, top shape. Now, not so much. I spent so much time cleaning, oiling, adjusting my first wheelchair. I’m not sure whether I should...

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New Wheeling Gloves

I have been using the same pair of wheeling gloves for the last 30 months. They have been used on a large majority of days for the last 18 months. Somehow somebody knew that I could use a new pair for...

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Second Class Citizens No More

I often have a sense of being spoiled, living in Utah. People seem very disability friendly. Accessibility issues are few and far between. However, on Valentine’s day I had an experience of...

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Patterns of Disclosure

Yesterday evening I went to another concert in which my friend Dave was playing viola. He has a new girlfiend, so I was introduced to her before the concert. She and I sat together. Dave knew that I...

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A Beautiful Disclosure

For several months I have been chatting in a very friendly manner with the guy behind the meat counter at the grocery store. Last night we went on our first date. He took me out to dinner at the...

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Bilateral KAFOs Become Normal

Buckling under tremendous peer pressure from Sean and Art, I decided to try out bilateral KAFOs with wheelchair as my standard presentation. I have done this countless times before, but not as my daily...

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First Wheelchair Cushion

I had been reluctant to acquire a wheelchair cushion on account of my atypical ratio of arm length to torso length. This leaves my hands relatively far away from the wheels compared with most people,...

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Wheelchair as Lifeboat

A couple of weeks ago Alicia said to me "I’m going to kill myself today. I know how I’m going to do it. You have done everything you can. There is nothing you can say or do to stop me." The evident...

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Magnetoencephalography Symposium

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a brain imaging technique which Claire was subjected to when she went to San Diego as part of a BIID study several years ago. If you REALLY want to impress people when...

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ADA Appreciation

While attending the magnetoencephalography symposium some weeks ago, I had drawn the attention of the building coordinator to some inadequacies of the wheelchair seating arrangements in the auditorium....

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Another Three Day Diary

Just another egocentric three day diary; starting with May 12th. There’s stuff about BIID. Honest! Thursday I decided to hike in an elk refuge, keeping my elevation below 8000 ft on account of the...

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Differently Abled Dyke!

Alicia and I decided to participate in the "Dyke March" that is part of the vibrant "Pride Festival" in Salt Lake City. She made a sign for my wheelchair which said "Differently Abled Dyke". We parked...

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Keeping a Secret

It’s really not comfortable for me to be secretive about BIID at this point. However, I make exceptions when there appears to be good reason. We had not visited Alicia’s parents in a year or so, and I...

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Able Bodied Hiker

I wonder if this is my first anti-BIID blog? It’s not really that; but circumstance caused me to have some thoughts of wishing I didn’t have BIID. I know that many of you wish you didn’t have it, but...

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Wheelchair Hike Number Four

Dave was on a mission of mercy. He knew from the tone of my voice a couple of days earlier that I was in significant psychological distress from my wife leaving me. I knew that the best thing I could...

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Wheelchair Hike Number Five

Dave and I did another wheelchair hike today. I certainly appreciate living in an area where there is an assortment of mountain trails which are wheelchair accessible. I am making notes about all these...

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Apotheosis of the Emotional Base Jump

Some time ago Lane pointed out that I seem to have a predilection for emotional base jumping. Base jumping is where one jumps off a high object (building, cliff, etc) and hopes that one’s parachute...

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GP Visit Number Eleven

Ever since that first visit when I disclosed to my GP about BIID, the subject has seemed to dominate our discussions in one way or another. Today was no exception. The nurse who does the preliminaries...

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Bilateral Leg Brace Hike Number One

I finally got around to doing a hike with bilateral leg braces and crutches. This is the hike to a high elevation lake that I mentioned wanting to do almost two years ago. I was very glad to have my...

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Bilateral Leg Brace Hike Number Two

I felt ready to push the envelope a bit in this mode of hiking with leg braces. I decided to go alone and 100% off trail. There was inevitably going to be some boulder hopping too; I’m familiar with...

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A Grand Opening

A new wing has been added to the psychiatric hospital where I work, doubling its size. The opening ceremonies took place recently, along with a grand tour, buffet lunch, etc. Yes, it was fun, but...

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This is not Enough

Enough… It’s one of those weird words that looks stranger and stranger the more you look at it. It can’t possibly be spelled right. Is this a metaphor for the meaning behind the word? Although...

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Wheelchair Hikes Number Seven and Eight

Alicia suggested to me that we take a hike on the wetlands wildlife refuge trail directly opposite our house. A great deal of the trail is paved, and I had not yet taken my wheelchair on it, so this...

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Assumptions

Being a wheelchair user has provided many advantages that I did not foresee ahead of time. One of these is that it is a conversation starter. Since I enjoy talking with strangers this is a good thing....

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Three Years

Ah yes, those magic three years have come and gone. Sean brought up the issue recently, and I admitted to having some foreboding about it. The aspect of most significance is that I have never not used...

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Cascade Springs

Just as Dave and I found a nice table in the sun, a young man came out of the Starbucks and approached me. "Were you on television?" he asked. I had picked up Dave from his place, on the way to our...

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Wheelchair Hiking Alone

My wheelchair hiking adventures began in 2010. Each year since then I have increased the proportion of hikes using a wheelchair. This is all part of my gradual BIID transition. But something was...

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