Well... this is gonna take some getting used to!
I was born with hip dysplasia in my right hip, which I've obviously been dealing with for 24 and a half years now. (Well, "half" in two days.) When my hip starts hurting, it affects my other hip, and recently that's been affecting my lower back, feet, sometimes legs and knees... that makes working pretty tough lol. When your whole body is affected by something that used to only affect your hips, it makes pretty much everything hard.
I started looking into different mobility aids, how they would help, how they might not help, etc. Through everything, I found a cane and forearm crutches would be the best for me. Because one hip's problems quickly affect the other, I knew a cane wasn't the right way to go. It would only support one side at a time. So I decided to buy a pair of Walk Easy forearm crutches.
They're pretty cool!! Of course, they came in on a good hip day lol. But I tried walking around with them, learning how they worked and the right way to use them, and they feel good. I'm excited about this, although a bit wary... Obviously limping around shows the world my disability, but with these, I'm visibly disabled. That's not bad, it's just not something I'm used to yet. I can't help but feel like these aren't for me, or that I'm not disabled enough for them. (I'll be using them on bad days, not all the time.) But that's something I'm working on. We've all got some form of internalized abelism to work through... mine's just been dug into haha.
Here's to finally helping my body 💖
