And then I remembered that one of my colleagues had set up a team of people to, the official, what, what officially they were supposed to be doing was managing disabled children, between childhood and adulthood, so, you know, 'cos they had a good service, the school health service and then there was nothing and this was to kind of tide them over. And I thought, “Well I bet they'd know about what, about stuff to do.” 'Cos they, I knew the Director, I knew her outside the work as well.
So I phoned her up and they, they had started putting older people on the books so I then became an official patient then and they put me in touch with their, they, it's them that got me the arm rests and stuff. But my rheumatologist and OT hadn't event heard of them.
So I gave them all the information and he's now referring patients to them. But it's just horrendous really when you think 'cos other people might, at that point when I, I could have given up their job really, but be, because I knew people because of my job I, I got advice and, and what the health service hadn't realised as well is that you can actually get reimbursement for the costs of all this equipment from the Access to Work. They didn't know about that either, you see. So they missed, missed out on a lot of money. Neither did the rheumatologist, neither did the OTs. Nobody knew anything about that.
And that then immediately?
Brought me into contact with loads of radical disability rights people who knew about, everything about everything. So that was, for me very empowering because it, it looked at disability in a whole completely different way, that the problem isn't me it's society. I mean, I discovered that anyway in one sense, you know, the hospital didn't know what they were talking about really.
So well, it was one, one in fact put me in touch with a chap who had the voice activated software, he's a paraplegic. Had a little bit of movement in one hand so he could, he could work a mouse but nothing else. Because I kept saying, “I'm sure there must be some other way of using it.” “Other than typing.” And they were trying what, all different things but nobody really knew what, what there was available. But, so this voice stuff was wonderful. 'Cos you just speak into your computer then.
So the rheumatologist and OT came down to see it. So I made, and by then I'd got arm rests. I'd got this various things. Even this tilting table, you know, all this kind of stuff. And even that, that, that little thing they didn't know about either. You'd think an OT would know about, wouldn't you really? |
