I Couldn't Care Less: Time to Change
Created | Updated Jan 4, 2015
Time to Change
A couple of weeks ago I went on a first aid course with my wife. You know the sort of thing, slings, the recovery position and CPR on that weird dismembered torso who doesn't seem to have much left to live for. By the time I'd finished with him he was breathing okay but had a couple of cracked ribs and possibly a punctured lung to add to his worries. Despite all this I passed. I have to admit though that I related this triumph more than a little sheepishly because I was the only person there who wasn't disabled.
My point, to be clear, is that had a massive advantage over everyone else. There was one lady in a wheelchair who had a slide out of her seat without the use of her legs to place our volunteer in the recovery position. Another chap was completely blind. He was tying slings and treating burns just by touch. That they were trying at all was impressive testament to their determination to function normally. That they were succeeding put my own endeavours in the shade in humbling terms. Then, of course, there was my wife.
If the rest of the attendees were individual boxes of disability cereal then R is like one of those family selection packs with a little box of every choice in them. She has a joint condition, constant fatigue and neuralgia as well as being asthmatic, dyslexic and partially sighted. Because of all this, she couldn't formally complete the course. This felt pretty silly because her medical knowledge was second only to the lady teaching the course. She was always asked to answer the questions when the rest of us had given up and easily supplied information none of us had been taught. In a way this is the story of her life. She's easily better at my job than I am and much of what I know she taught me. But she can't do what I do because she'd never manage the hours and she can't lift.
I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be in this position. To be possessed of sufficient drive and aptitude that you carry on trying to do things society has already decided you can't have the paperwork for. To be locked out of the life everybody else finds tiresome and annoying because of a quirk of genetics or a tragic accident. For me the first aid course refreshed and reaffirmed some stuff I'd learned in the past, and my attitude to disability was one of those things. I've found often that people held back in some was push harder in order to keep up with the rest of us. Here is a massive and largely untapped resource of people with a lot of skills and a huge amount of drive to achieve their potential. We need to find ways to include them not just because they are missing out but because we are. So, 2015, let's see if we can't figure this out.
