I will admit that I wasnt as keen on going on this trip as my sister and husband were and just figured that I would 'go along for the ride'. After all it is a frickin' long way from my Lafayette Colorado comfort zone. I was riddled with doubt that I would be able to do such a thing but figured that I would be with my two favorite people that understand me and my 'disease' (MS) the most. How hard can it be?
It was hard.
The initial hard part was what is called 'motor learning'....learning to do something new that you normally don't do in your everyday life. Such as...going up bus steps. Now you may say that everyone has to learn how to go up and down bus steps and everyone is at some risk for falling. True. But for a gimp with limited mobility and strength that risk is magnified considerably.
Lifting your foot up to the next step may or may not be doable. Combine this with 30 people waiting behind you (and they paid good money too!) and the gimp mind gets frantic which distracts from the task at hand.
There are bunches of people wanting to help in this situation which is great but they don't know what to do. It is the gimp's job to direct them to 'lift my right foot up to the next step' but even that takes practice. That is where the motor learning comes in. The second set of steps gets easier and so on until you have 'learned' the technique. Mostly. There are always surprises. Such as the buses in Argentina having 4 steps while the buses in Chile having a spiral staircase of 7 or 8 steps.
You have to have some flexibility (mentally as well as physically :0) for these new surprises/challenges. But how like life!
No comments:
Post a Comment