bibliophile-in-training:

heroofthreefaces:

athelind:

pathwaytovenusv:

earhartsease:

phoenixonwheels:

phoenixonwheels:

Me (not old): Started using a cane when I started having balance issues because *that’s what canes are for*.

Old people: Waving back and forth like a tree in the wind. Grabbing onto everyone and everything around them to keep from falling. Risk falling and breaking a hip every second they’re on their feet. Refuse to use a cane because it would be “giving up”.

I need y'all to know that the person I wrote this about did in fact eventually fall, broke two vertebrae and ended up spending three months in the hospital in the middle of a pandemic so anyway if you need a mobility aid use a mobility aid.

Seriously. Value your safety and independence and mobility above holding onto some weird notion of “staying normal”. I have better mobility now than I’ve had for the last four years, because I’ve finally got the right wheelchair equipment. Somewhere in there I had a very isolated and painful year of struggling on a crutch and hardly going out at all before I got persuaded that a wheelchair would help (that hadn’t even occurred to me because “but I can still walk a little”). Now I can do 6mph up the street and not be in pain and exhausted and fuck yeah!

One of the fundamental aspects of humanities evolutionary story is us finding ways to make & use tools that make our lives easier, safer and in some even just possible. Mobility aids are tools. So are glasses. So are anti-depressants. So are limb braces. So are a multitude of other things. Some get stigmatised for ultimately arbitrary reasons. Use the things that make your life easier. It’s worth it (& you’re continuing a tradition that is far far longer than recorded history, and how badass is that?) x

I’m in my late 50s. A year and a half ago, I sprained my hip, and used a cane while it healed. I had the cane handy after throwing my back out five or six years ago, and I’ve had occasion to use it a couple of times in the intervening years.

After my hip was pretty much healed this time, I started carrying the cane with me as a matter of course, because I realized that with the mobility aid, I wasn’t nearly as sore on my daily walks, and I wasn’t throwing my back out or tweaking my hip nearly as often. The cane helps me prevent and minimize further injury and damage.

As I’ve explained it to a few people, I don’t need a cane to leave the house, but I may need it if I want to get back to the house.

I got myself a cane two or three weeks ago. I don’t use it for walking but it’s helpful for getting out of chairs or out of bed. Also for pulling on the passenger side side-view mirror after the carwash brushes knock it out of place.

Not to get weird but too much of our focus in health is on treating issues after the fact rather than preventing them. If you find that you need any form of physical aid, mobility or otherwise, you should be able to both acquire and use it without feeling stigmatized. If you only need it for a small task like getting up from a chair then you still need it! If it helps you to the point you say to yourself “Wow, this has made a notable difference in how I do X but not Y” then use it for X! Using something early on may prevent more serious injuries later. If you feel you’re about to fall down the stairs you’ll use the rail, right? You won’t not grab the rail because only a certain set of people can.