This week I cut up my 2 month-old disabled parking placard. Since I am several weeks out from my hip replacement I no longer need it.
For the short time I had my placard, it was helpful, especially with shopping. Yet despite this, I had mixed feeling using it. I needed it, but I didn’t want it. Immediately after my surgery, I didn’t feel “disabled,” but I needed help getting out from the car and making into the store. (Also, as a side note, I also occasionally felt judged by onlookers several times as I got out of the car: “Was I really disabled, or disabled enough?”)
However, the 2 years prior to my hip replacement were a different story. I needed a cane to walk over 50 feet, I couldn’t go on a walk with my wife, and I found myself not wanting to go out at all. ( In this sense, Covid was a partial benefit for me since it gave me an excuse to stay in.) I particularly hated to go grocery shopping, when I had to judge whether or not I could make it to a shopping cart without my cane. (For those who use canes, you know how great shopping carts can be, because it’s one of the rare times you don’t need a cane to get around and you can feel “normal.”).
Thinking back, it was these 2 years prior to my surgery when I really should have had a disabled parking pass, but I was too around to ask for one. How silly—I should have been more proactive on getting help with my mobility just as I wish I had been more aggressive getting my hip surgery done earlier. Oh well, c’est la vie.
But the past 2 years did have one benefit—particularly now I can walk pain-free again! I now know what having chronic pain is, what using a cane means, and what growing older will probably bring me (hopefully > 20 years from now!) I now know what some level of decreased function—in reference to my mobility—is going to mean for me. I have a peek into my future, and it’s not an intellectual or theoretical peek, it’s a physical peek.
Don’t get me wrong. Significant hip arthritis and needing a hip replacement surgery isn’t a good thing—but, at least for me, it was a very useful thing because it helped me to expand my perspective. And I for one take great joy in cutting up my disabled parking placard and walking as much as I can for as long as I can for the rest of my life.