Embracing Change - Meet The New Tesla👩🏻🦼➡️
The power chair was definitely a tough pill to swallow. When you have ataxia, you start losing your abilities and walking is just the more obvious and visible one. That’s just how it works, and we move according to it. Ataxia has definitely taught (still teaching) me to embrace the change/ uncertainty that comes with this disease and life in general.
That extra wheel is the smart drive!
I knew I needed a power chair for some time now. I looked into getting a power attachment and the smart drive, a motor wheel that attaches to your wheelchair, seemed perfect. Until, I started crashing into poles and my reflexes weren’t fast enough to control it. It was doing more harm than good and it was just sitting in my house, rent-free for months. I guess I just didn’t want to admit to myself that I made a wrong choice - my pride was getting in the way. The product was great but, it just didn’t work out for my abilities. (Planning to give my SmartDrive away. Contact me if your interested :)
At this point, I knew getting a power chair would make it so easy for me but, taking it needed a whole new level of acceptance that I didn’t know it needed. One, I was grieving the abilities I was slowly losing and two, I didn’t want people to think I was giving up (which obviously I wasn’t). When you have something so visible, it just becomes so difficult to not care what people think. Plus, mobility aids are so heavily stigmatized!
I took a major leap of faith and ordered my first power chair. My friends back in college used to call my wheelchair a Tesla which for this chair, is so apt! I was definitely more excited to be able to go around and explore with ease. When, it came, the first thing I did with it was take it for shopping! Normally, I love to shop till I drop but, with this there was no dropping lol! Bad for my wallet I know but, the feeling of that freedom was unmatched. I also went to work a few days later and boy, I really felt that I should have gotten this chair earlier! The fact that distance wasn’t a barrier anymore has opened so much adventure (bringing out the inner nomad lol). I still have to get better at navigating this power chair though but, I have a whole lifetime for that so, no rush.
Embracing all the changes that happen in life makes it more exciting. It makes us more adaptable to situations. Plus, how boring would it be if everything was always the same 😉 Oh and follow along by signing up!