A Day in the Life: Sarah's Journey

After a number of life-changing experiences, I was given a new outlook on life. Life is for living so make the most of it whilst you've got it. So over the years that followed that is how I have tried to live my life. One aspect of this was taking up a new hobby, I had wanted to try Scuba Diving for several years after a try dive on a holiday in Tenerife. Little did I know at the time that the experience I had was nothing compared to the experience I was going to have.  During the year where my life changed forever, I stayed with friends for a while, they themselves have disabilities and they introduced me to the Scuba Trust. This is a charity focussed on providing support and instruction to individuals who want to learn to dive but have a disability. I soon got hooked and decided that I was going to work towards my PADI Open Water qualification. For anyone unfamiliar with this, there are certain skills that you have to practice and achieve in the pool before even being allowed in...

I am currently in Torquay with my husband who is a teacher for the annual conference for the National Union of Teachers. Although everything seems calmer now that is not how my experience of this weekend started. It started before the weekend when I did some research into the hotel we were staying at (the room was through a block booking and so did not have the same control). I decided to look into it for my own peace of mind and glad I did. The hotel we are staying at is the Rainbow International and all information I found on-line did not fill me with confidence that it would be suitable. As a result my husband contacted the hotel for me on my behalf to ensure that it was suitable for my needs. When he rang up, he was reassured that we were to get the fully accessible room and that we would not be moved. This room was designed around a specific person and although this is the case we were guaranteed to be getting this room due to my specific needs and being more physically impaired ...

Welcome to my new followers, I am looking forward to some interaction from my followers as some already have. I have had an interesting weekend and some things I have heard through twitter has made me feel the need for another blog post. Some of the main topics being discussed include how disabled people are seen as 'benefit scroungers' and that of the experiences of disabled people and transport. I have spent time in previous posts speaking about how the media shows disabled people as benefit scroungers and so am not going to try and reinvent the wheel with that one. Instead I am going to discuss my experiences of public transport. I have mentioned this topic but not at great length and so feel it is appropriate to focus a whole post to this topic. As previously mentioned I have been disabled from birth and so have experienced public transport in many different circumstances. When I was younger I was very reliant on being driven everywhere that I went. Many of the buses were...

Disability in the media has always played an important role in shaping the lives of disabled people. For many years the only stories shown were that of sob stories and those who have achieved great things against the odds.  There are two main areas of Disability and the media that I would like to cover. Firstly that of the effect the media has on disabled sport and secondly that of the news and the limited coverage of disabled people's issues.   Media and the effect that it has on disability is a hot topic for many at the moment, due to much of the media that is portrayed being of the negative persuasion. Disability is often in the media eye for many of the wrong reasons, and if not directly wrong reasons, it is usually for something like that of Oscar Pistorius where the discussion was around his ability and whether it would be fair for him to join mainstream sport (there has also been other negative press unrelated to the sport of him but that's another story altogether...

I am writing this when there is much uncertainty in the world for disabled people. The government is making it their mission to hit disabled people with unnecessary cuts and attacks on benefits for disabled people that, contrary to the story the media feeds the general public, are not abused. Only this week, approximately 8000 people joined the Hardest Hit March to protest against the devastating attack on disabled people. Disabled people as a whole have always been some of the poorest people and this is only set to get worse. For many, every day is a fight, made worse by the fact they can't afford to live. To live with a disability means expenses that the average person can't even contemplate. I have always tried to live as 'normal' and 'full' life as possible, but unfortunately, this has always come at an extra cost, financially, emotionally and physically. I will focus on finances for now as this is a very hot issue that all disabled people can relate to. F...

I have just been on a long weekend break to Dublin with my husband. We set off at a stupid time in the morning (left the flat at 3.15am). We decided not to book special assistance, because even when we do it does not always go smoothly. When we arrived at Bedford Station we were pleasantly surprised. We started to head to the platform that we needed, and rather than having to ask for assistance like we usually have to I was asked whether assistance was needed. This is how it always should be but, sadly, rarely it is. When the staff member helped me on the train, he said he would call through to the Luton Airport Parkway. Not surprisingly there was no one to meet us at the other end and so my husband helped me off the train (he is used to this). We then had a painless journey using the airport bus which was accessible and the bus driver was very cheerful. We completed Online Check-in as we did not have any luggage that needed to go into the hold, this meant that our first point of cal...

I have a lot of experience of pain, which is a direct result of my disability. I regularly feel that people just don't understand, so I am qualified to share my opinion on this. I have been a wheelchair user all my life, and my body, to put it politely, has taken a battering and is a mess. This has meant that as I get older, I have suffered from more pain, especially regarding my back going into spasms. I perhaps haven't looked after my body but have I had a choice? Not really; if I chose not to do something due to the risk of hurting myself, I wouldn't do anything. This is not a life worth living! So I make the only choice possible to put myself at risk daily to live as normal as possible. Expectations of other people put pressure on me to do things that I know could potentially harm you. Since I have been driving, I have had to get my wheelchair in my car independently. As I can't stand at all, it means I have to drag my wheelchair over me to place it on the passeng...