By Jon Peirce
If you’re like most people, you tend to divide the world into two groups: those who are fully physically abled, and those who are disabled. In this typology, the latter group is made up of people with visible or at least readily discernible disabilities: those in wheelchairs or using walkers or canes to get around, those whose eyesight is so poor that they can no longer drive and need special technology to be able to read, those with emphysema or other lung conditions requiring oxygen in order to breathe, or those whose dementia has reached the point where they require constant supervision.
The reality is much more complex. Disability, certainly for those of us age 65 and over, is generally not an either-or proposition, but a spectrum or continuum. After a certain point, the question isn’t whether one has some kind of disability, but what kind of disability one has and how its effects play out in daily life.
One example of a disability that may not be immediately apparent but that is nonetheless very real is the all-too-common enlarged prostate requiring twice-hourly trips to the washroom. Other examples include hearing difficulties that make it hard to hear in conversational situations where more than one person at a time is speaking and certain types of arthritis that don’t prevent one from walking but do make it hard to sit for long periods of time or to get up from low seats. Walking around in our midst are all sorts of folks fully capable of doing a good day’s work, but who could more easily pass through the proverbial needle’s eye than get up from the floor unassisted, or sit through a two-hour meeting without bathroom and stretch breaks.
What makes these partial disability issues more complex than the types of issues referred to in the first paragraph is that it isn’t always clear to the partially disabled individual whether he or she should acknowledge the partial disability, particularly in situations that might involve a request for help or accommodation. When do you play that “handicapped” card? Many of us (including yours truly) are feeling our way through a maze of ambiguity here.
To give just one example: the arthritis in my hips is almost certainly severe enough to entitle me to put a handicapped sticker on my car. But I have thus far refrained from doing so, largely because I don’t like the optics of driving into my tennis club with a handicapped sticker on my car. (Against all apparent good sense, I continue to play tennis as well as swim and dance, partly out of the fear that if I stop doing these things, my muscles and joints will atrophy and my condition will worsen).
Given that many people with partial disabilities aren’t always clear about acknowledging them, it’s hardly surprising that public policy hasn’t progressed very far in this area. The one notable exception is legislation concerning doorknobs, which are often a problem for boomers, particularly those who aren’t very big or who have issues with shoulder mobility. Various cities have long been addressing this problem for public buildings, requiring them to use accessible levers rather than knobs. Now the city of Vancouver has gone one step farther. Last November, it amended its building code to outlaw the use of doorknobs in all new buildings, including private homes. The ban became effective this March. A similar ban is being considered here in Halifax, NS, though no decision has been taken as yet.
With regard to most areas of life, however, partial disability remains a grey area. For instance, what to do about items placed on a bottom shelf 2" off the floor in the grocery store? (I avoid buying such items whenever possible, but when I absolutely must buy them, I will now ask a store clerk for help). At what stage of disability should one feel free, on an overcrowded bus, to ask a fully abled younger person to give up their seat? (I have thus far refrained from doing this, though many fully-abled people have given me their seats voluntarily). This list could go on. Complicating matters still further is the fact that certain types of partial or even near-total disability, notably those arising from severe arthritis of the knee or hip, may indeed be reversible (e.g., through joint-replacement surgery).
Normally, one adapts to such conditions by making changes to one’s living arrangements, such as buying furniture that’s easier to get in and out of or even moving to a one-storey building to avoid stairs. The potential reversibility of your condition raises the question of just how far you should go in modifying your surroundings. Does it make sense to move to a one-storey building when, in a year or two (or perhaps sooner) you will again be able to negotiate stairs with your new knee or hip? Here again, there are obviously no hard-and-fast rules. You must balance the inconvenience and expense of short-to-medium-term adaptations such as moving or replacement of hard-to-use furniture against the improvement in your quality of life that will result, almost immediately, from your being more in tune with your immediate surroundings.
Adding to the uncertainty (at least for those contemplating joint replacements) is the fact that one never knows exactly when one will be called in for surgery. I’ve been told I’ll receive one month’s notice when my name comes up on the hip replacement list. What one can tolerate for six months or a year may be quite different from what one can tolerate for two or three years. What assumptions should one make about the likely date of one’s procedure?
In short, the “answer” for how to deal with partial disability is that there aren’t many easy answers. Make no mistake: you are frequently in situations where you must make important decisions based on severely inadequate information, often decisions with significant cost implications that could have a major impact on your quality of life. The prime requisites for living with a partial disability, I’ve concluded after some years of trying to deal with one, are a high tolerance for ambiguity and a good sense of humour, something I don’t always find easy to maintain on cold, wet mornings when my knee sounds like the middle shelf of the hardware store every time I take a step.
To be continued! In the meantime, if grocery and drug stores could put their lowest shelves twelve inches off the ground instead of two, many boomers would be grateful. So would the store clerks who currently have to do our low bending for us
This article is another in a series by Jon Peirce, a retired professor and union representative and long-time free-lance journalist, on subjects of interest to boomers. Some of Jon’s previous work has appeared in such publications as The Globe & Mail, the Christian Science Monitor, the Ottawa Citizen, Books in Canada, the Toronto Star, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and the Kingston Whig-Standard. Jon currently writes, teaches writing courses at the Nova Scotia Seniors’ College, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Silver Economy Engagement Network, all of this while doing an M.A. in history at Dalhousie. He is a professional member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. His interests include tennis, swimming, improvisational dance, and cooking, and he has recently returned to the stage after a 46-year intermission, playing Judge Omar Gaffney in a Dartmouth Players production of Harvey. His second book, Social Studies; Collected Essays, 1974-2013, has just been published by Friesen’s Press in Victoria; his first book, Canadian Industrial Relations, originally published in 1999, is now in its third edition with Pearson Education Canada.
photo credit: wikicommons
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