Tag: adapting

Pants and Intimidation

youshouldgoanyway

Muscular Dystrophy PantsUp until 8th grade I played basketball despite having muscular dystrophy. One of the lessons I took from that came from the pep talk our coaches would always give us before each game. If we were playing an especially tough opponent they would remind us that “These kids put their pants on just like you — one leg at a time!”

This statement had always held true for me and helped me to make some potentially intimidating experiences much less so. However when I started using a wheelchair I realized it was one big lie — not everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time! For me, the best way to put on pants is two legs at a time!

I’m not sure it makes me more intimidating but you definitely do what you have to when it comes to adapting to a disability. Hopefully I can run into my old coaches sometime and share this piece of knowledge.

My dead arm

youshouldgoanyway

My cousin Joe has labeled my right arm my “dead arm.” When he first said it several years ago, his mom, my aunt, didn’t think this was very nice. I didn’t care. He was eight years old and that’s exactly what he saw — my dead arm. He’s pointed it out several times, teased me about it, and is not intimidated by my dead arm.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not really dead. I just can’t lift it very high on its own. I use my left arm to help lift my right arm when I need to drink from a cup or eat or lift something. The arm just appears dead because it doesn’t appear to do all that much by itself.

But it does.

My dead arm can type. I am typing this right now with my dead arm. It can write. It can hold a cello bow and with help can make music. My dead arm can grip a tennis racket, and with momentum from my wheelchair side-arm a tennis ball to a 90% first serve percentage.  It can grasp onto anything. It can shake your hand. Most importantly, it can steer my wheelchair using the joystick.

As my cousin has gotten older, it’s more fun to tease him back about it. Over the summer I finally had an opportunity to say “Hey my dead arm might not be able to lift a drink by itself but if I use my other arm to help it, this dead arm can smack you upside the head!”

Lucky for him he didn’t wait around for a demonstration.

There’s more than one way to win

youshouldgoanyway

In grade school we used to play a game called “Steal the Bacon” in gym class. It involved splitting into two teams, assigning each kid a number, and sending the teams to opposite ends of each side of the basketball court.

The teacher would put an eraser, or the “bacon” in the middle of the court. At random, she’d call out 1 or 2 numbers and the kids with the called numbers from each team would run out to the middle of the court.  The object was to grab the bacon and run back to your team’s end line without getting tagged by your opponents. Any of the called numbers could steal the bacon and if you made it back, your team got a point.  However if you got tagged, the other team got the point.

I hated this game. Hated it badly. I was a slow runner so I would either ALWAYS get tagged or NEVER catch the other person. I hated it.

That was until I figured out how to win in a different way.

Even though I was a slow runner I was usually just fast enough to get out there so that the “face-off” would still happen. This was the moment where you are both circling the bacon, waiting for the most opportune time to steal it. Most kids wanted to steal the bacon — myself included. But here’s where I changed my strategy.

I never tried to steal it.

Since you could get a point by tagging the stealer, I set my sights on tagging the other person the MOMENT they grabbed the bacon. So I would hover over the other person, just waiting for them to try to steal it. Eventually they would make the mistake of going for it and my hand was there to tag them immediately. It didn’t work every time but it worked most of the time.

I went from never winning to winning about 75% of the time just by changing my strategy.

This is true for many things in life. By changing the way you look at something or changing your definition of success you can often change a losing proposition to a winning one.

So whether it’s a physical chore like getting up from a chair or your job or a course that you’re having difficulty with — take a moment to look at the problem differently. How else can you win? Can you redefine what it means to win by changing your goals?

Remember, you don’t always have to steal the bacon.


Use a camera bag to hold your wallet, cell, & more

youshouldgoanyway

One of the first questions I had when I started using a wheelchair was “What the hell am I supposed to do with my wallet?”

I tried putting it in the front pocket of my pants, but that was uncomfortable and difficult to access. I tried putting it in the pocket of my wheelchair but I felt like it could easily fall out unnoticed. Then I had to also deal with a cell phone and it required a better solution anyway.

Thats when I tried a small camera bag — specifically the Lowepro Ridge 60. I know you can attach various bags and what-not to your wheelchair but I really didn’t want to have to dig underneath or behind every time I needed something.

So I picked up the camera bag after seeing it at a store and thought it might work. It was a great decision. I have had the same one for almost five years now and was recently looking to replace it with a new one — maybe a different one. But I decided that there was nothing about it that I didn’t like so I re-upped with a fresh version of the same model.

I love it for several reasons:

  1. It’s small enough not to get in the way but big enough to notice if you drop it.
  2. It holds a lot. I can get my wallet, phone, and either iPod or camera in there plus change, receipts, etc.
  3. It has two extra pockets — one small one that zips and one larger one that velcros shut.
  4. It’s inexpensive at around $12.
  5. It travels well — great for planes since you can keep it on your lap at takeoff.
  6. You can quickly throw change & receipts in it after checking out at the store.
  7. It fits nicely on your lap when used in conjunction with the leg strap I use.

The only negative is the occasional teasing by friends and family about my “purse” or “manbag” but the easy comeback is to say, “Well where the hell would YOU put all this crap if you were in a wheelchair?!?” They usually can’t come up with an answer. Then I say, “Well I can think of a place you can put it!”

If you’re struggling for a solution to how to deal with all the “stuff” when riding around in a wheelchair, I highly recommend the Lowepro Ridge 60 or any other small camera bag that you can find to use.

How wheelchair tennis improved my function

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I started playing wheelchair tennis in 2006 after seeing a photo of the amazing Nick Taylor playing in an electric wheelchair. I had no idea you could play competitive wheelchair sports in a power chair. I started playing tennis again, albeit from a chair now, and it changed my life.

When I first started playing, I had a hard time holding onto the racket when striking the ball. I couldn’t hit very far, or hard. I had trouble leaning over to pick up the tennis balls off the ground without pushing up off my knees to sit back up straight.

But after playing for several months, all of this changed. My body optimized itself and somehow everything got much easier. The biggest improvement came in my trunk muscles. I became able to lean over and pick up tennis balls easily and pop right back up to sitting up straight. This improvement translated to many other things like being able to roll over in bed more easily. Even when I am cleaning up my house or doing laundry I know that my trunk muscles are working better because of tennis.

I don’t know the exact reason this happened. There might have been some strength improvement but I think it’s more likely that a bunch of muscles I wasn’t really using decided to kick it into gear and help out. I think this is something it’s easy to forget about. Even if an individual muscle has weakness, your body can learn a new way to function such that other surrounding muscles help out. If you start adding muscles together to complete a task, it’s a lot more effective than just relying on one muscle.

This is why I encourage wheelchair sports and exercise to other people with Becker muscular dystrophy.  You can even play wheelchair tennis if you are still walking but have difficulty — you just use the chair to compete. You don’t have to overdo it to see improved function. You just have to do something long enough to allow your body to optimize itself and eventually make life easier.