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Shower Stool. How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways... #ThinkyThursdays 

Okay so I'm not actually going to wax lyrical about a shower stool for the whole post, but it got me thinking how sometimes we put off things that can helps us for no valid reason or from misconception.

This is my new shower stool, or at least as close a picture as I can find: For those who are knew around here, I need a shower stool because I have bilateral talipes, in layman's terms, club feet. I was born with the condition and had several corrective surgeries as a child, but it only improved the condition, it didn't cure it. Unforunately the older I get the more trouble I have with my feet, making standing for long periods (especially on hard surfaces like showers stalls) and walking any distance probelmatic.

Hence I've been considering a shower stool for a few years now, but have always put it off. Mainly through a misconception that all shower stools looked like this: Having looked into such things:

Now knowing that I could have bought my sturdy, free standing, ajustable height little stool, I wish I had done it earlier. Showering is once again a joy rather than a chore.
Seriously, why don't all showers come with shower stools as standard?

Anyway, as I mentioned, all this led me to thinking how misconceptions or worry can stop us doing things that can actually really help us in the long run.

I also use walking aids when I am out and about - crutches to be precise. They make me so much more stable and allow me to keep going when before I would have just had to sit down. They don't take away all the pain, but they defintely reduce it.

Yet I know people who refuse to use walking aids because they somehow see it as giving up, or as a weakness. I've never given up in my life and I am a damn sight better off with my crutches than without. From the knee up my body works perfectly, but from the knee down it's pretty crocked. Choosing to start using the walking aids was quite a big moment for me (quite a few years in the past now), but it made my life so much better.

It's so sad that some poeple see disability aids as making a person lesser.

This includes things like glasses and hearing aids. I'm pretty sure my generation and those following mine are less likely to look on such things as bad (personally I think glasses are as sexy as hell ;)), but I know many from my parent's generation who do things like only put their glasses on when they really have to, or go out without their hearing aid, or even refuse to have their eyes and ears tested at all.

Technology is there to help people and it's getting better all the time. I think it's about time we banished the stigma. Be it a little thing like a sturdy shower stool or something more fundamental like a robotic limb, everyone should have a chance to get the best out of life.

So there you have it, how my brain went from shower stool to something a bit deeper :).

Are you having any thinky thoughts today? Would you like to share them?
Posted by Natasha Duncan-Drake at 14:16 Labels: **Thinky Thursdays, *Personal: Disability, Thinky Thursdays

