It's Not Easy Being Wheely

 

We just got back from a fabulous five-day trip to New Orleans. It was a bucket-list trip for me as I've always wanted to see the city/area and I wanted to do a special trip with each of my kids. This trip was with my daughter.

I started the trip on a high as I'd just spent the previous six days on my first solo trip since my brain surgeries last year, my first solo anything really! I'd rested and relaxed as much as I could so I was able to walk around with my family for the first few days. As I say that, keep in mind that my walking has changed significantly of late. I've learned that, in order to maintain stability in my joints and not have my body go on high alert tensing up all my muscles, I have to walk VERY SLOWLY. Like painfully slowly. Again, it's embarrassing. I guess I must have had a lot of issues with pride because God sure is humbling me! Almost every time I start walking, I forget that I have to walk slowly. So I start off at a normal pace and before long my body starts sending off warning bells and sirens. Then I slow down, and slow down a bit more, and things even out. I don't get far, but I seem to have extended my daily limits to more like 2-3 miles if I incorporate a lot of breaks. It used to be 1/2 to 1 mile, so this is a big win. 

My family was very sweet and patient with me, walking slowly alongside me and making sure to point out dips, drops and bumps in the sidewalk that my vision struggled to catch. Knowing that I'd have a limited radius, we stayed in an Airbnb right in the heART of things. You'll have to check out the pictures on the listing, it was indescribable! 

But as careful as I was, after two days of touring around plus one day of travel, even with rests and boat rides, I was done in. But we still had two more days of adventures in New Orleans left, so the wheelchair was my only option. 

Why didn't I use the wheelchair right away? Lots of reasons. First, I'm trying to walk on my own as much as I can while I can. Who knows what that future holds and I kind of have a use it or lose it fear too. Next, Tuesday and Wednesday we had boat excursions that were NOT wheelchair friendly. Sure, their websites say ADA, but I cannot imagine how you'd go about it, and it would severely limit your experience. With the first boat, the Natchez, I wanted to sit on the second level and be able to see everything. No, there was no elevator. On Wednesday, we had to take two shuttle busses out to the bayou to do a swamp tour on a little pontoon boat. Not a clue how that would have worked in a chair? So I kind of felt like I needed to leave the chair behind on those days. That said, I wore out quick and was back at the Airbnb vegetating by 6:30 each evening.

Heading out on Thursday we kind of knew what we were getting into as we'd been walking around on the sidewalks for a few days, but it was much more challenging than we'd expected. It was rare to go six feet without broken pavement and/or a pavement switch. You'd have six feet of cement sidewalk followed by six feet of cobblestone followed by six feet of stone pavement. It was SO WEIRD!!! It was super common to have big, gaping holes in the sidewalk 2-3 feet wide that were difficult if not impossible to circumnavigate. Tree roots would push up under the walkway, breaking it into large slabs. The sidewalks were home to many of New Orleans' residents who stretched out alongside their animals, often in groups of three or more. Most of the corners had cut outs for the wheelchair to dip down into the street, but not all of them. On most trips we ran across places where the sidewalks were closed altogether, sometimes on both sides of the street! In fact, before long my husband figured out it was so much easier to push the wheelchair down the street than to try to use the sidewalks at all. Now that meant he felt the need to push me at 25 MPH, or as close as his feet could get to it, and pull over when there was room so cars could pass us, but it got us where we needed to go!

Honestly, if I was there trying to use my power chair alone I have no idea how I would have done it. My husband said he saw a group of people in power chairs one night while they were out doing a tour, but apart from that I didn't really see anyone in chairs or scooters. New Orleans, at least the older part of town that tourists go there to see, is NOT wheelchair friendly.

I was pleasantly surprised on our last day, though, that both of the streetcars we used were ADA. They allowed me to board and sit in my chair and we were able to get around town successfully. I had been warned on the website that one of the lines only had limited ADA cars, but I guess God was watching out for me!

Here's the Thing: I'm really glad that at this point I'm still an ambulatory wheelchair user so I have more options. My heart breaks for those that don't and for whom this trip wouldn't have been possible. I wish there was more I could do to bring awareness and further the accessibility out there!

Note: I realized as I was preparing this post that we hadn't taken any pictures of the sidewalks.  We were too busy trying to navigate them! So I borrowed this one from Alicia at we dare be brave: Dangerous Streets of New Orleans