Crawling Through the Sludge …

… on a purple power chair / o’er the curbs we go / ripping out our haaaaiiiir …

With that out of my system, I’ll continue.

Remember my last post, so long ago? (Sorry—a few new ones are in progress. It’s slow going, though, and I was away for a week and have been frenetically busy making excuses since getting home.) If memory serves, I wrote something pleasantly, perhaps delusionally, optimistic about the winter and snow and my ability to cope with whatever inclement weather Toronto had in store for me in the months to come. Part of that remains true: I’m still confident that I can keep myself relatively happy and content and occupied indoors while the temptation to go out is somewhat attenuated, and I have a lengthy to-do list of tasks, both “work” and pure leisure, that I look forward to tackling in a more concentrated manner this winter. What I am currently questioning, however, is whether or not I’ll manage to stay sane(ish) when I have no choice but to leave the house and venture into the worst my otherwise lovely city has to offer.

This’ll be my third out-of-hospital winter as a wheelchair user. The first one, I had to rely on my husband to muscle my manual chair over and through ice and snow. Although he was a good sport about it, and while he developed exceptional upper-body strength as a result of this forced workout, I tried not to abuse his goodwill and thus got out for a brief spell once a day at best. The second, last year, saw a huge improvement in my health and mobility, and I had my power wheelchair, newfound independence, and stubborn determination to keep me on the sidewalks and in my right mind in all but the harshest conditions, the notable exception being a lengthy snowstorm that soured me to the idea that I might grow to not just tolerate but even—gasp!—enjoy the winter.

I kinda, maybe assumed that the weather gods, whoever they are, would compensate me for that period of blizzard-induced hardship by granting me meteorological peace this time around. Instead, they thought it necessary to subject me to a slushy test of grit, chair, and patience earlier this week.

It snowed most of Wednesday morning. I was indoors having coffee with a friend so didn’t pay it much attention except to admire its beauty. I had a doctor’s appointment in the early afternoon but wasn’t overly concerned, assuming that the sidewalks would be clear by that point. If not, no biggie: the snow would be fresh, and fresh snow provides reasonable traction; my power chair can handle a few inches without real problem as long as I’m careful and avoid slopes. Shortly after lunch, then, I pulled on my parka, mittens, and hat and hit the road.

I was hardly a block from my building when the troubles began.

What I’d failed to account for before setting off was that it had warmed up enough for the snow to turn to sleet and then to rain. Sleet and rain would be fine individually or even in combination, but adding accumulated snow and a just-barely-above-freezing temperature to the mix resulted in an incredibly wheelchair-unfriendly tundra of sludge banks encasing murky moats of brownish slush.

These are precisely the conditions—ongoing precipitation, terrain resembling a sludge version of those extreme mud races whose appeal I’ve never understood—my chair likes the least. The stretches of sidewalk that had been cleared by the person or people responsible for doing so were fine, but not everyone is diligent enough or able to get to the task in a timely manner. I therefore had no choice but to crawl inch by inch, taking it incredibly slowly as to avoid killing myself or my fellow pedestrians and succeeding at that endeavour, thank you very much. Intersections, on the other hand, were uniformly challenging: I spun out at the first curb cut, and then at the second, and then at the third. You get it. With deliberate, painstaking maneuvering, I saved myself the indignity of asking for help and made it to the doctor’s office in one piece, even if it took me three times as long to get there as it usually does.

The real real trouble arose on my return trip. In the hour I’d been inside, those vengeful weather gods, noticing how pleased I was with myself for persevering, had magicked the temperature down below zero. As a result, the sludge was beginning to freeze, an eventuality I had neither anticipated nor prepared for. Panicked, I did some deep breathing and evaluated my options before reaching for the most obvious one: use an alternate mode of transportation. I’m not in the habit of taking the streetcar such a short distance (I’m my frugal father’s daughter, and I could thrift a shirt for the cost of a TTC fare!), but desperate times call for desperate measures, so I practised self-care and good judgement by opting to make my way to the closest transit stop rather than risking life and limb to save a few bucks.

At the only intersection I needed to traverse to get there, my chair got stuck. I tried backing up and approaching from a different angle. No luck. I backed up again and managed to make the problem worse. I was now wedged into the thickening morass, my mind spinning as rapidly as the back wheels of my chair were. Three long minutes passed, 180 seconds that felt like an eternity. I started to wonder how long I could survive on the emergency chocolate bar I keep stashed in my purse and pulled out my phone to Google solutions, as is one’s instinct when rammed wheelchair-first into rapidly hardening slush.

That’s when a good Samaritan appeared from nowhere and offered to give me a push. I usually chafe when offered help since I’m a strong, competent, independent woman who requires no assistance from anyone ever (right), but he was gently insistent and very kind and said he’d done it before, and, critically, Google had yielded no tenable options I could effectuate without calling for aid. With his brawn and my steering, I lurched back to the concrete and then, a few minutes later, into a streetcar. There remained obstacles to overcome: indeed, things were dicey the block I had to brave from the TTC stop at which I got off to the safety and comfort of my apartment building. I managed, though, to avoid swerving onto the road or into an iced-over sludge pile and was soon transferring from my slush-laden chair to my warm, dry manual one. My power wheels had done their job and deserved some rest. Until the next morning, when I was back on the road as if nothing had ever happened.

What’s the moral of this story? What was my aim here besides giving myself space to vent? That question, as is usually the case with these rambling posts, is up for debate. If you’d asked me (or I’d asked myself) before I started writing it, and if I were being totally honest, I’d have probably said that I meant it to be a tale of endurance: one of those “it was hard and the world is ableist but look at me go” stories that rightfully dominate many recovery- and/or disability-related blogs. Upon completing it, however, I realize that the true message I wish to impart is that it was hard and the world is ableist and winter is long but I’m increasingly able to let these things roll off my back and move on rather than struggling to find some greater meaning in every annoying barrier to participation that life, or the weather, throws my way. Also, and more practically, that sludge is the enemy, and homeowners and business proprietors (and the city) need to be better about clearing and salting the sidewalks.