I flew to Vienna, alone, in a wheelchair…
So I flew to Vienna, alone, in a wheelchair…
My last relapse was a corker. I'd been running three times per week, couching slowly to 5k. Then one day in November I found I needed to take an unexpected break half-way, an ossified shuffle to a bench. Within the week I could walk for only 12 minutes at a time, unable to run a single step, and after I fell in a train carriage, totally unable to traverse it in motion, I decided to get a manual wheelchair.
The first time I used my chair I couldn't move it down the pavement. I looked so incapable that people constantly stopped to offer help, to offer acts of charity. A good friend told me ‘OK, this is where we start. Time to get to work.’ So I steeled myself and started to work out, pushed it a little more each time, adventured a little further each time. 6 months later I could wheel myself for 2 miles, up and down curbs and hills, throughout the city where I live.
But at the same time my world had become small.
I was reluctant to try things, scared of the challenges my chair presented. I was seeing fewer people and I was more reserved when I did. I started to feel a burden in social situations, like people would have had more fun without me, and in that psychological direction there be true monsters.
Then I remembered the feeling I had when I mastered self catheterisation: defiance. I grabbed hold of that feeling with both hands, mounted up, and booked a flight to Vienna.
There was a conference one of my trainees was presenting at, the WU Gender and Diversity Conference (thoroughly recommended), so i decided to surprise her. I wouldn't see her until day 2, so I was going to travel alone, in my wheelchair for the first time, knowing no one in the country. The distinct risk of being isolated loomed large in my mind, of getting lost alone in unfamiliar territory, of sitting having solitary lunches in my chair, of retreating for evenings in my hotel room. So I wrote two rules that i vowed to follow during my trip:
Meet as many people as possible.
Accept every invitation.
I later added:
Rest when you need to.
My trip became an adventure like few others. Countless small acts, and sometimes big acts, of kindness helped me to make it all the way. From National Express reserving me an easy seat to reach and stowing my wheelchair for me, to the airport staff kindly helping me through security, to the airline bussing me and my chair to the plane and meeting me with my chair on the other side.
But it was the kindness of new friends that took my breath away. They pushed me across fields to reach a tram to get us into the centre of the city, they helped me wheel my way through the streets, they bundled me upstairs and into the smallest elevator in Vienna to get me up to a drinks reception. It would have been hard to make this trip alone, but though I started without knowing anyone, before long I found that I was surrounded by friends.
The thing is that I wasn't receiving charity. I eagerly met people and got to know them, being curious and genuinely interested in them, I was kind and grateful, and I gave the energy I had as freely as I could. I think these wonderful people wanted to be around me, they invited me to lunch, to drinks, to companionship. I genuinely felt that their time wouldn't be better without me, and our efforts together to include me weren’t just a kindness, they were made to spend time together.
What I did not expect was how connected I would feel, quickly entering into close, intimate, meaningful relationships. I was surrounded by truly wonderful people and though I might never see them again those moments, that intimacy, our long goodbye hugs, are truly precious to me. I will be forever grateful.
But what I've learned is the most important lesson. I can do things I once thought, indeed that even recently would have been, impossible. Even better, meaningful connection is only ever an invitation away. From here on my rules will follow me: I will aim to meet as many people as I can and i will accept every invitation, and in the meaningful friendships we will forge our efforts to include me will be no acts of charity…