MissAbility
Hey guess what I’m now in a wheelchair. Didn’t see that coming. Though maybe I should have…
MissAbility goes to Lidl.
Let’s back up. I’ve been running around like a crazy person my whole life. Between the ages of two and eight, I appear as a blur in photos – a streak of skinned knees and curly hair, too fast for my mom’s 90’s camera. Age seven to eighteen: I’m a competitive figure skater, throwing my body in the air and speeding across ice. After uni, I’m an actress in NYC, literally running down 5th Ave to squeeze in an audition between waitressing shifts. I was also a journalist, chasing stories wherever they led -- into fields, down to fishing docks, up the steps of town hall. I later worked in film and theatre production, where my job title was actually Runner. I ran. I hustled. I moved. Then I moved to the UK and stomped around London in my heeled booties, trying to conquer the screenwriting industry.
I was wearing these booties when I fell. January 2020. The steps outside my flat were wet. I slipped and landed like a starfish. That’s when my hip, which I’d been pretending for years wasn’t injured, said fuck this and gave out.
Looking back, being a competitive figure skater was a huge fucking mistake. But at the time, I loved it. My signature move was the misleadingly named ‘spiral.’ You glide around the rink on one leg and you raise your other leg up behind you as high as it goes. Mine went high. If you were good, like me, you reached your arm behind you, grabbed the blade on the bottom of your skate, and pulled your foot over your head to the full extension of your arm. Imagine a pair of scissors with the blades pulled all the way open. And on ice.
This move broke me. I was walking from the locker room to the rink when I heard the crack. My left hip buckled. I stumbled on the black rubber mats that protect your blades from the concrete ground. I held the rink wall, winced, and then went out on the ice for practice. Yeah it hurt, but skating always hurts. You smash onto the ice at high speeds and you don’t wear pads or a helmet. You wear tights and a tiny Spandex dress and you get on with it.
What I know now is I tore the cartilage in my hip joint. What I knew then, as a stupid twelve-year-old, was that my spiral got even better. I could bend my leg any which way now. The judges were impressed and gave me an extra star. Cool.
Less cool: the constant pain. I expected pain on the ice and after practices, but now it was all the time. I couldn’t walk the ten minutes to school. It hurt to sit, to stand, to walk. I’d go to the supermarket with my mom and by the frozen section I was limping.
Basically, I limped for the next ten years. Finally the right kind of doctor took the right kind of x-ray and was like, ‘Oh, your hip is broken.’ And I was like, ‘Oh. Can you fix that, please?’ And he was like, ‘Kinda.’ Kinda meant a keyhole surgery (they make it sound so cute, don’t they?), some injections, and PT.
Labral tear = torn cartilage = busted hip
It kinda worked. I’d been warned: the surgery couldn’t fix my hip; only ‘clean it up.’ They went in there with their mini medical sandpaper and filed down the jagged tears. But you can’t repair cartilage. My hip was still broken, but now it was tidy, and thanks to that bit of spring cleaning, I had three months of less pain. Then my hip got messy again, and I spent the next several years running around on a busted leg.
When your pain is constant, it becomes normal. When you’re told there’s no treatment or cure, pain becomes just another annoying thing in life – like needing to pee, or hangovers, or having to pay rent. My pain became a mosquito in the night – I was never going to find and squash it, so I just tried to block it out and sleep.
Then, in January 2020, my hip collapsed like a toddler having a meltdown in a supermarket. My hip said, ‘Fuck your ibuprofen. I’m done supporting your ass.’ I’d be standing and then suddenly, my hip would go ‘Nope,’ and I’d fall over.
One day, my hip pulled this shit while I was walking down my front steps. When I picked myself up off the wet pavement, my hip was done. I’d torn through all the cartilage and was now grinding down my bone. They gave me crutches. I worked from home. (Two months later, the whole world joined me in working from home due to COVID.) I relied on my partner to do the shopping and housework. This spring, I graduated from crutches to wheelchair. I’m still working from home, mainly from bed, because just sitting in a chair is too much for me. I need my partner to help me shower and dress. I ain’t running nowhere these days.
It’s been a weird twenty months.
Inaugural ride in my very own chair. Her name is Black Betty.
Full disclosure: I’m temporarily disabled. I don’t know what else to call it. I’m officially classified as disabled now, but I won’t always be… If the surgery works. After I get a fake hip, and after a long recovery, I should no longer need a wheelchair or be in constant pain. I know how fucking lucky I am. My woes are nothing compared to those of people with life-long disabilities.
I’m not a complete twat; this blog is not me presuming to speak for Disabled People Everywhere. This blog is a report on that time I involuntarily studied abroad in Disabilityland. I got a taste of the absolute bullshit disabled people deal with every single day -- the challenging shit, big and small, that I’d never considered as an able-bodied person. I want to tell you what I’ve learned.