| Shawn Shares | 
The Challenge of Looking my Best
Shh, I'll let you in on a little secret: I like dressing up. Whenever I'm given the opportunity to put on a nice shirt and a slick tie and flex the fancy pants muscles of my wardrobe I jump at it. But living the sitting down, wheelchair using, SCI quad lifestyle, I do often find it a challenge to look my very best when it comes to my clothes and/or my appearance. The first challenge of looking good is finding clothes that fit. Bottom line: pants aren't designed for sitting down so many wheelchair users like me have a tough time shopping for ones that work. I always get pants with a wider waist and longer inseam. Wheelchair related things can mess with my overall appearance as well. I've gone out before sporting some quality threads at a fancy event only to discover later that I forgot to have someone clean off the mud that kicked up on my chair's frame from rolling through rain puddles. So living a wheelchair lifestyle there is always a hidden battle going on between me, my clothes, my wheelchair, and my appearance, and it can make it challenging to look my best when I really want to.
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Tiff's Corner
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Traveling Tips, Finding Inner Peace, Accessibility Lawsuits, & Pregnancy Podcast
When you do a road trip by minivan, as a power chair-user, driving about 1,000 miles or so each day, you learn a lot. There are glaring missteps, as well as some pretty awesome lessons to be learned when you're on the road. Here are a few of the best; hopefully just in time for your own vehicular sojourn. Being Ok, With Not Being OkAfter 18 years, I can assuredly say "I'm finally ok with not being ok!" I only got to this peaceful place because I desperately need to be happy. The tornadoes and doomsday scenarios are enough to make this girl realize life is too short. Best be enjoying my awesome imperfections before they're gone as well! Man's Lawsuit Crusade To Make NYC More AccessibleI recently came across an article that highlighted Zoltan Hirsch, a double-amputee and wheelchair-user from Brooklyn, who's known for filing lawsuits against establishments in NYC that aren't accessible and fail to meet ADA guidelines. And not surprisingly - he's pissing off a lot of stodgy business-owners. Tiff talks with paralyzed and pregnant Mimi Emery, her baby was also fathered by a paraplegic.
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Parents With Disabilities
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Father's Day Follies
To all my fellow Dads out there and aspiring fathers, I wanted to wish you all a very Happy Father's Day. Being a Dad in a wheelchair is the only thing I know and it is one of those titles in life of which I am most proud. More than anything it has taught me that Forrest Gump really was onto something when he said that "Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know whatcha gonna get!" Yeah, life is that way in general, but fatherhood or motherhood for that matter really captures the true essence of that statement. Read a few of the fathering follies that I have had over the years!
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Clinician Resources
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On His Own: Case Study On Success Through Gliding Standers.
"I first met Daniel when he was eight months old. He had his first sit-to-stand stander before he was one. He used it regularly and had very few problems as a result. His spasticity decreased on days when he stood, he had very few urinary tract infections, and his passive range of motion was always good. When Daniel outgrew his last stander, the decision was made to try a glider stander so he could regularly get cardiovascular exercise and strengthen his upper extremities while getting all the benefits of dynamic standing. This would help him accomplish his goals of being able to propel a manual wheelchair more frequently and more independently. He did a trial with the stander and he and his family loved it. They liked the fact that the operation was similar to his previous sit-to-stand standers, and the fact that he could improve his upper-extremity strength while getting dynamic weight bearing through his lower extremities. So the process of obtaining the stander began." This article was written by Lauren Rosen, PT and was published in Advance for Physical Therapy and Rehab Medicine in June.
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