Tag: disability

My blogging birthday!

Today is the day that View From a Walking Frame finally turns one!

To celebrate, I’ve given the blog a makeover, and created a new Facebook Page which you can ‘Like’ by clicking here. My walking frame Martha and I would love it if you did!

I just want to take a moment to thanks each and every one of you for reading, commenting and sharing the blog. I hope that you’ll all stick with me. Your support really does mean so much and inspires me to tackle things that I might find hard so that I get the reward of being able to write a post telling you all about it.

The past 12 months have been pretty eventful. I’ve been given new splints, conquered my fear of using the bus alone, had some serial casting and managed to fall over and cover myself in gravy, to name but a few of the things that have happened.

Once again, thank you all for reading, and I look forward to telling you all about my adventures for a long time to come.

Nic and Martha

About my splints and wheelchair

Well, my holiday is now over and it’s back to normal for me. Yesterday I went back to the orthotics department because my AFO splint that I’m supposed to wear during in the day still isn’t comfortable on my left foot. The one for my right foot is really comfortable and I could easily wear that one all day. Sometimes it takes a while to get these things right.

My day splints
My day splints

My orthotist tried blowing the splint out one last time to see if that would make it less tight. It helped a bit but not enough. He decided that he would recast that splint at an angle that should be more comfortable for my foot to tolerate. I should have it in a couple of weeks or so. In the meantime I just have to try and wear my current left one as much as I can without making myself too sore. I’m still keeping the really comfy right-foot one.

While I was there I also took my night splints back in because the walking grips that I had put on them a few weeks ago were starting to peel off. They’ve been set off to be re-glued and I should have them back soon too.

My night splints
My night splints

This morning I’ve also made an appointment to have my wheelchair booked in for a service. It’s been a while since in had one done and I think there’s a few things that need looking at. I’m not a professional so I don’t know for sure, but I’d rather get them checked out. That should be happening within the next few days so I’ll let you know what happens there too.

My London adventure

Hey guys,

Sorry things have been a bit quiet around here lately, but there’s a reason for it.

I spent most of last week on holiday in London. It was the first time I’ve been there and I’ll admit that I was really nervous about going because of the size of the place and how busy I thought it would be.

Thankfully, I went with some members of my family who go to London quite a lot so they know their way around fairly well. They’ve been trying to get me to go with them for a good couple of years now and I’ve always refused out of fear of the unknown, but I finally decided that it was time to face my fear and go experience the city first-hand.

I have to say that I’m very glad I did. I took my wheelchair with me rather than my walking frame Martha so that I wouldn’t get too tired from walking and so that I’d be able to see more things. I would’ve liked to have taken Martha instead, but I didn’t want to spoil my holiday by overdoing it.

In the end I was really glad that I did go because I had a really lovely time. I got to visit lots of nice places, see lots of nice things and I found that the public transport wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be once you figured out where you were going.

Don’t me wrong, I didn’t like all of it. Lots of places were really busy and crowded so I don’t think I would’ve liked to try and walk through them. Some people were really nice and moved out of the way as best they could, but the amount of people who stepped over my wheelchair footplates to get past me was also quite a few, and this is one thing that really annoys me because I personally find it quite rude.

One of my favourite days was the day I spent the morning that I spent in a park. My little sister spent ages pushing my wheelchair up and down some humps that I think where there for people skateboards and bikes to use; went with me on the swings and helped me down the slide. Other members of my family helped me do other stuff like sit on a zip wire. I took lots of photos of this stuff so I’m going to do a post dedicated to that later on.

The holiday was nice while it lasted and I think I’ll definitely visit London again at some point.

My frustrations about making tea

In case you all haven’t guessed by now; I love drinking tea. There are times that I like to dunk biscuits into too, but that’s a whole other story.

Thankfully, I can use the kettle to make a drink for myself, and with the help of my thermal cup that has a lid, I can carry it round on the ground floor of my house so I can sit down to have it. Before that, I used to have to leave my tea in the kitchen and keep coming back to it but I’d normally forget about it and let it go cold.

Despite having found a way around that problem, there is still something that I find frustrating about tea making’: the fact that I still can’t carry the drink upstairs.

My family are always helpful and will bring my drink up to my bedroom for me when they’re in the house and not too busy. That way I get to have it at my desk while I’m working on a blog post, writing job applications or spending longer than I probably should scrolling down my Facebook timeline.

If I’m home alone I have to go back to my old ways of leaving my cuppa downstairs and coming back to take sips every so often in amongst doing other things. It’s a small thing but it gets frustrating sometimes but I know I can’t dwell on it too much. I know I’m lucky that I can do as much as I can do already.

My first full night in night splints

There has been an achievement in Nicland this week, or it feels like one to me at least.

I’ve managed to spend my first full night in my night splints since I got given them a while ago!

My night splints
My night splints

At first I couldn’t wear them for a whole night because I can’t put them on for myself so I would have to take them off again if I needed to get up in the middle of the night for anything. Then I took them back to the hospital and got some walking grips put on the bottom so I wouldn’t need to keep taking them off.

Even after I’d had the grips put on, it still took me some time to be able to wear them for a whole night because I had to build up wearing them for longer periods of time slowly by a couple of hours at a time until I got used to it.

Now, I’ve finally done it! I was pretty surprised when I woke up the next day and found that they were still on.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do this most of the nights that I wear them now.