EXPERIENCING A DISABILITY

Disability is not inability is a phrase that I reckon with. Despite the meaning of this phrase I believe that people experiencing disability go through a lot of difficulties as they undertake their daily routines. According to the four situation undertaken to examine the impact of being physically challenged, I encountered various difficulties which am going to discuss below. For the first situation of playing a patient with unilateral upper extremity weakness, opening and closing a peanut butter jar and jam with one hand, preparing a PB and J sandwich, spreading contents on bread slice with the non –dominant upper extremity proved hard to me. This is because it is not easy to open a butter jar with only one hand. Normally, I had been used to open and close the peanut butter jar using my two hands and on being told to do it on one hand, was not easy since a habit is always a disease. This made me to come up with a new method to open and close the jar

In the case of opening and closing a peanut butter jar and jam with one hand, preparing a PB and J sandwich, spreading contents on bread slice with the non –dominant upper extremity, I was able to do this through the help of my teeth which helped me to hold the peanut butter jar. The incisors jar helped me to have a grip of the lid therefore making it a little easy to open the jar

In the first I felt confused at first and I had no idea of how to go about the situations. Amidst all the confusion I figured out how I could tackle the activity. Preparing a PB & J sandwich, spreading contents on bread slice with the non-dominant upper extremity made me feel tired because the non -dominant upper extremity was not used to such tasks. Although all this seemed hard at the beginning, the new methods of handling the challenge made me feel better and also encouraged me a lot since my impossibilities were becoming possibilities for me.

In all the four situations I had to make some safety precautions to avoid being injured .For the first situation I had to be careful not to cut myself with the knife when preparing a PB & J sandwich since the knife was very sharp the plastic beach ball. I had to do the preparations slowly since I had not been used to prepare B & J sandwich while spreading contents on bread slice with the non –dominant upper extremity.

In conclusion, the experience on disability has taught me the numerous challenges that the disabled people undergo when performing their daily routines. This will impact positively my future work as a PTA since I will be able to treat people with disability with a lot of love .This is because I have experienced some of the challenges they undergo on a daily basis and helping them on my side would do a lot of good to them.