Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

First, let me start off by saying that I’m not looking for pity by writing this post.  If you’ve heard enough about the ankle incident, you may not want to read further.  Although, it’s not really about the ankle, so much as it is about the experience of having limited mobility.  This is a blog after all, so I think it’s a good opportunity to write about my observations over the last couple of weeks (by the way, sorry if there are run-on sentences in this post.  I’m writing this during the “Big Day Off”, which for me means staying in the room with the computer, a book, and a bottle of wine, and for Dave means total freedom to go explore on his own, unencumbered.  Anyway, the wine sometimes makes for bad grammar, though I promise to proof read it while sober, before posting).

I think it’s easy to take mobility for granted, and I’ve had some interesting experiences while being on crutches and in a wheelchair.  I don’t know what it’s like to be permanently impaired, because I know that at some point in the near future I’ll have the ability to walk around again.  But I’ve had a small taste of what it must be like for someone who is bound to a wheelchair.  I think these folks must have a lot more patience, humor, strength of character, and strength of mind than I do.  Also more patience.  I know I said that already, but it’s clearly key.

So, here are my thoughts and experiences, categorized:

1. There’s No Dignity In This

• When we got back to Riomaggiore at 3 am after being in the La Spezia hospital for 7 hours the night I hurt myself, we had a problem getting into town.  Literally, they close a gate and if you don’t have the key (or in our case, don’t know where to use the key), you’re out of luck to get into town.  Dave stopped the car at the gate, tried for several minutes to figure out how to open it, came back to the car, put the hazards on, and told me he was going to try to find someone to open the gate.  While he was gone, a car came up behind us, and since we were blocking the gate, I got out of the car to try to get them to help.  Except, I couldn’t walk, and still didn’t have crutches yet.  So imagine pulling up to a gate at 3 am, and a car is blocking it.  A woman gets out of the car, hops up the hill toward you, saying something that remotely sounds like “help” in Italian, and then starts to tell some story in English about hospitals, and her boyfriend is trying to get help to open the gate, and can you help, and oh, by the way, she says she can’t move her car because it’s a stick, and can’t use her clutch foot, so in addition to opening the gate, could you also drive her car through the gate, etc.  When Dave came back with instructions for opening the gate, he found that the car had not only moved, but some strange guy was driving it.  Also, because I didn’t have the crutches yet, Dave gave me a piggyback ride down the hill to our apartment, which wasn’t as much fun as it sounds.  At least it was 3 am, so not too many people saw us.
• Thank goodness for bidets.  Being an American, I never learned *exactly* what they’re for and how they’re used.  I mean, I’m not an idiot, I know *generally* what the deal is.  But the faucet mechanism seems to be a little bit different for each of them, so questions remain.  Anyway, being in a cast that can’t get wet makes you get a little creative when it comes to getting clean.  It’s quite a lengthy chore to shower with a garbage bag and rubber bands while keeping your foot out of the shower propped on a little stool (and potentially dangerous, to boot!), so sometimes, it’s the bidet.  I’ve used it to wash my hair, wash my face, shave my good leg, shave under my arms, soak my good ankle in hot water, and soak my good ankle in cold water.  Of course, I didn’t jump in all at once.  At first, I used it for shaving, because that seemed pretty safe.  But after a while, you stop caring about these things, and all of a sudden, two weeks in, you’re washing your hair in a bidet.  Oh well.
• One day at lunch, I went to use the facilities.  It was pretty dirty in there, complete with urine-floor.  Crutches and urine-floor do not mix.  I slipped.  Fortunately, the bathroom was so tiny, it wasn’t possible for me to fall down.  I hit the wall with my shoulder.  But unfortunately, my bad foot hit the urine-floor for about 0.3 seconds.  Bad foot has a cast and a half of a sock.  That sock went right in the lavanderia pile, let me tell you.  After I used the bathroom, one of the workers at the lunch place went in there.  They came right out, and went in with some bleach and a mop.  I just *know* they thought I was the cause of the urine-floor, but I wasn’t.
• I’ve actually gotten pretty good with stairs.  I get a bit tired, but generally, I can manage them with crutches.  However, the stairs in the place we stayed in Venice were quite small (depth-wise, I couldn’t fit my whole foot).  I was okay going up the stairs on crutches, but coming down on crutches was impossible.  So, I crawled down on my butt, every day, twice a day.  I did mention there’s no dignity in this, right?
• Speaking of crawling, do you realize what must be done to get on and off a train?  How about a water taxi?
• It’s hard to be discreet about giving yourself an injection when you can’t wait to get to your hotel to do it because it’s too far, or you’re driving that day, or whatever.  What do people think I’m doing, heroin?  No, it’s anti-coagulant.  Mind your business.
• In Venice, we had a process for crossing bridges.  Dave wheeled me up close to the first stair, folded the leg rests of the wheel chair in, and then I got up on my crutches and crossed the bridge while Dave carried the wheelchair across.  At the bottom of the steps on the other side, Dave would unfold the wheelchair and make a beeping sound while I backed up to the wheelchair to sit in it (like the sound a truck makes when backing up).  Seriously, you guys, if I had any dignity to begin with, it’s all gone now.

2. Why Can’t I Be More Patient?

• I’ve had a couple of very low moments when I [nearly] lost it.  I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I apologize to our Garmin GPS, the City of Bologna and its lack of parking spaces near our hotel, our hotel in Bologna for not being near any parking spaces, the shipping companies, stores and restaurants I wanted to ship from/shop in/eat at, but that weren’t open when it was convenient for me to do so, and Dave, who for some reason, is still staying in the same room as I am.

3. People Can Be Cruel

• In Venice, Dave was wheeling me toward the entrance to the Doge’s Palace one morning before St. Mark’s Square got too crowded.  We passed two 20-something girls, one of whom looked at me, pointed at me and said loudly to her friend, “THAT WOULD SUCK!” as they went by.  Thanks.

4. People Can Be Clueless

• I’m not saying I’ve never been clueless.  But it’s interesting how many people don’t see me/look through me when I’m in the wheelchair or on crutches, and therefore bump into me or rush ahead of me impatiently, nearly knocking me over.  I wonder if people don’t want to think about having a handicap, and their minds are tuned to ignore people who do.
• I don’t know if people in other countries expect that those around them don’t speak and understand the same language as they do, and therefore it’s okay to say anything, but I actually became a curiosity on an English-language tour at one point in Venice.  We had just arrived and were on our way to rent a wheelchair.  Our hotel and the wheelchair place were fairly close to the hospital in Venice.  I’m not sure why the hospital area was on this tour, but the tour leader was talking about the hospital, and when she passed me, she said, “Ah, now, this poor woman is coming from the hospital, I’m sure of it, with her broken leg…” and the people on the tour all looked fake-sad for me as they gawked at me struggling down the street on my crutches.
• There’s lots of gawking in general.  I think most people don’t know they’re gawking, which is why I put this observation under the “clueless” category instead of the “cruel” category.

5. People Can Be Incredibly Kind

• Everyone we know in Italy has offered to help me, going so far as to call their doctor friends and ask them what I should do, who I should ask for as various hospitals, which names to drop, etc.  So nice, and definitely above and beyond what I would expect.
• At museums, churches, and on the vaporetti in Venice, I was treated so well.  People helped us over bumps and onto boats, took us around special ways to use elevators, gave us priority to enter or board over other folks, and generally made me feel comfortable and well cared-for.
• Baby-boomers are wicked nice.  Most of the people who struck up conversations with us while I was on crutches or in the wheelchair were baby-boomer Americans, Brits, Italians and Germans.  So nice for someone to talk directly *to* me instead of indiscreetly staring at me and talking *about* me to their friends.  I worry that good manners are becoming a lost art (not that I really have them – just ask my grandmas how many written thank-you notes I’ve sent in return for years of fabulous Christmas and Birthday gifts).
• I know that they’re just trying to get my business, but male Italian shopkeepers are so great.  Since I’ve been going around in a wheelchair, several of them have called me “Princess”, which I am in danger of getting used to.  🙂

– Meredith