Spatial thinking
It’s been six days since the accident and tomorrow we head home. The swelling and pain are down considerably, and Camino Seguro lent me a walker from their clinic, so I don’t have to ask Peter to help me with every little thing. I’m still not supposed to put any weight on my right leg. Not only is it really painful, but apparently that’s what could cause my fractures to displace and heal improperly. I’m supposed to get up only to use the bathroom. I’m getting really good at balancing on my left foot.
We often try to incorporate ADA accessibility into our projects at school, but after this week I realized that I usually approach that component of my designs as a math problem or geometry problem. I’ve never given much thought to the experiential side of it. How could I? In one of my grading classes we took turns evaluating different spaces from the vantage point of a wheelchair, but that’s nothing compared to the reality of losing my mobility and independence for the next twelve weeks. And it’s even less for people who have to make permanent adjustments in their lives due to disease or illness.
So, this walker I’ve been using is 26” wide. The door to the bathroom is 28” wide. And in spite of the tight squeeze, our hotel room is actually quite spacious. I’m really dependent on the walker if I need to get up. Contrast this with my hospital room, which was basically the end of a hallway with a door on it. It was so small, that had I been capable of getting out of bed on my own, I would have always had something to hang on to. The toilet was five feet from my bed. In the hotel room, it’s probably something like 15 feet. At my parents’ house, if they can set something up for me on the first floor so that I don’t have to go up and down stairs every day, it’ll probably be something like 40-60’. I’m not convinced that bigger is better.
All week I’ve been thinking about my difficulties moving around in the hotel room (okay, it’s a suite), and wondering how I could possibly think about this at the scale of landscape, where things tend to be bigger and less controlled.
Today I was stir-crazy enough that Peter suggested we venture downstairs where there’s a pool and jacuzzi. I was reluctant at first, since I’ve already hopped out to the elevators once before, and the whole process was embarrassingly slow. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity, and as soon as we got to the pool floor, I was confronted with the landscapers’ challenge otherwise known as “the ramp.” The first one was okay, probably 1:10. The second, well, I’ll just have to show you:
I stood at the top of this ramp, wondering how I was going to get to the bottom of it without landing on my tailbone. My walker didn’t seem to be gripping the pavement, so finally I had Peter take it to the bottom of the ramp while I held on to the wall, and then Peter came back to the top to help me down in a way that kept me off of my right leg. It took some work, but here was the reward:
It was really great to be outside for a change, and being in the water took a lot of pressure off of my back. Definitely the right move.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
