Have You Got A Spare?

You know my political opinion on our current predicament but here’s a quick recap so we can move on. 

Transmission is probably more to do with schools than pubs so we close pubs and keep schools open. People die of causes other than Covid as a direct consequence of lockdown policies, but so many people die of Covid that you’re not allowed to mention deaths by any other cause. They just don’t happen if they’re not tallied daily on the TV news or in the newspapers. 

There’s an effective vaccine but not enough of it to protect the number of people required to bring back some semblance of normality. So we get tier 4 restrictions, which like their predecessor in tier 3 are lockdown rebranded in an effort to combat lockdown fatigue. People are wavering. After nine months of restrictions they’ve had enough. So along with the rebrand there’s the timely release of news that there are not one but two new strains of the virus. At least one of these new strains spreads faster than the original, which was already spreading so fast that it kept us from our work places, hobbies and anything that even looks like a social life.

I think we’re up to speed on that now, so let’s come at this from a different angle. After all, this is a column about disability as opposed to politics. Let me try and shed some light on what it’s like to be a disabled person in the Covid-19 pandemic. Or to be this disabled person, in any case.

The first assumption people make about me is that I am or have been shielding. I am sure many disabled people are shielding.  I know one or two who are but I’m not one of them. It’s an easy if slightly lazy assumption to make, like imagining that I live on benefits instead of working or that I’m on first name terms with that woman who used to be in Silent Witness.

When restrictions were first imposed in March I was one of the first in our office to go and work from home. That was because the government released a list of conditions which they thought might make you more vulnerable to the very worst effects of Covid. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) was one of those conditions. CKD makes it sound a bit like an after shave. Like something you’d pay for or buy for someone else as a gift. I hate ungratefulness but I’d be largely disappointed if somebody bought me CKD for Christmas. I’ve already got it, anyway. If there’s anything more awkward than receiving a shit Christmas present it’s receiving a shit Christmas present that you’ve already got. 

At the point when I started working from home there was no advice about shielding for anyone. When it became a thing a week or so later I did not receive a text or a letter advising me to shield. I have discussed this with both my nephrologist and my transplant surgeon and neither feels I am particularly vulnerable. If I’d had my transplant before all this kicked off then I would have been advised to shield. After the surgery I will be on medication which suppresses the immune system so that my body does not reject the new kidney. If the piss-pots running this country haven’t found a way out of this by then I will be required to shield. That is unless I receive the vaccine which according to the speculative gizmo that is the online vaccine calculator will be March or April. Let’s call it September, then. But until my surgery, since I don’t have an immune disorder or a respiratory condition I’m as free as the next man. Which is not very free at all as it turns out.  

Like many people, disabled or not, my freedom extends to the fact that I can go to the shop for essentials like food, and to the pharmacy to pick up the 363 medications required at my stage of CKD. One one such sunlit jaunt recently I was shouted after by someone walking behind me. She clearly didn’t know my name (much like the rest of the population who think I’m Phil, Paul, Lee or that woman who used to be in Silent Witness) so I didn’t know she was talking to me at first. It was only when I turned to cross the road that I realised she was trying to get my attention.

“Ey mate...have you got a spare one of them?’ 

That’s how they talk sometimes in Thatto Heath. Common nouns are viewed as a luxury. Either that or she just couldn’t bring herself to refer to my wheelchair. Maybe if she had to she would whisper that one word like Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough used to on that inane sketch they used to do where they dressed as gossiping women. The only way I knew that the woman was referring to my wheelchair is that when she asked again she looked down at it and nodded.

The answer was no.  I do not have a spare wheelchair. When I relayed this information she looked genuinely shocked, as if I’d told her that test and trace was now working. What sort of disabled person was I if I didn’t have a spare wheelchair? What if that the one I have breaks? It’s a fair question, isn’t it? And it reminds me of something my dad used to say if we asked him for something unrealistic as kids:

‘Oh aye...we’ll get two in case one breaks’

It was meant to be a sarcastic way of saying no but I didn’t think that approach would be appropriate in this situation. Not everybody gets sarcasm and I didn’t want to get her hopes up. She didn’t even do nouns. There was bugger all chance that she would get my inherited sarcasm. So I just said no. I don’t have a spare wheelchair and if the one I have breaks then an incredibly sweaty man comes around to fix it, realises he hasn’t got ‘the parts’ and then comes back and fixes it.

I did try to help the woman with some advice on how I got my wheelchair but it turns out she was after a quick fix. The time it would have taken to go through the correct channels at wheelchair services in the NHS were not going to cut it. That’s if they are still organising the provision of wheelchairs during Covid.  So all ends up I didn’t solve her problem.  The chair was not for her, but for some unspecified relative who somehow needed but didn’t have a wheelchair of their own. Now who was the disorganised disabled person? I might not have had a spare wheelchair but I had at least managed to organise one! 

Even if I’d had a spare wheelchair what are the chances of it being of the required size and dimensions to cater for her unspecified relative?   Non-wheelchair users don’t always think about these things. A wheelchair is a wheelchair to some. They’d think about that a bit more if they had to use someone else’s legs for a spell. Her plan made Operation Moonshot look like a sure thing.

She didn’t press the matter, and one of the advantages of using a wheelchair is that you can escape from people fairly quickly in a downhill direction on Elephant Lane unless they break into a run. The only people in Thatto Heath who regularly run are eight year-olds scampering after the ice cream van before it pulls away so I was able to get away..

I reached the sanctuary of the shop, where all I had to deal with were the ‘shouldn’t you be shielding?’ glances of the other customers while I was deciding which doughnuts to buy. Essentials. So there you have it, a snapshot of what it is like to be this disabled person during the pandemic. It turns out that it is still not a given that you can avoid unwanted, bizarre attention even when everybody else is supposed to be staying in.