Canes

I resisted using a cane for a very long time I figured it made me look old.  . It was a visible reminder of MS and made me have to come right out of my comfortable denial.  The last few vacations I took where I didn't need a cane, or at least not all the time, were in Toronto and San Francisco.  I got to go there when my brother in law was touring with Mama Mia.  I remember walking all over the place in Toronto.  I don't even know why I took a cane!  San Francisco was a little trickier.  Probably because of the hills...duh!  I remember struggling a little bit more to do things like get on the trolley.  I acquired my favorite cane while I was in San Francisco.  I didn't take a cane for some reason.  I think we're going to go try to buy one somewhere.  My sister was staying at a very nice residency hotel.  We happen to mention to the concierge that we needed to cane.  She said I've got one in the basement that someone left here once.  It was a great cane with a molded handle.  Much nicer than what you can buy in a store and I am sure it was custom made.  At the end of the trip, after using a cane the whole time, I ask if I could buy it from her.  She knew I live near Chicago, and made me a great deal.  Buy her some Frango mints and I could have it!  I'm pretty sure I've got the better end of that deal!

Since then, it has become more and more necessary for me to use the cane.  Some of it is because my balance is so bad.  My current neurologists says my balance problem is cerebral and not due to dizziness or vertigo.  The other reason I need a cane is due to muscle fatigue.  After a while, my legs just quit working and I look like Lurch from the Addams family. 
I actually can really tell the difference between a regular canes with a curved handle and my special cane with a molded handle.  The molded handle cane is much more sturdy.  You wouldn't think it would make that much of a difference, but the other day when I had accidentally left my good cane in the office and I was using a regular cane. I went to work out on the elliptical, and afterward, I actually had to have someone help me to my car because the cane was just not hold me up.
I've tried to get some other canes that are more  attractive, but they just keep going back to the little molded handle cane from San Francisco.
When I am using the cane, I frequently get mistaken for a little old lady.  People ask me if I need a senior discount and talk to me as if I am just a little bit senile and don't understand modern conveniences.  The fact that I had to revert to glasses  from the contact lenses a few years ago doesn't help either.  And the fact that I actually getting up there in years probably contributes,too.
The next time someone asks me if I want the  senior discount I'm just going to say yes.
The thing about the cane that makes me feel a little bit better, is it means I am not in a wheelchair.  A few times I have used a wheelchair for vacations.  Makes it a whole easier to shop!  It is so interesting to me, how much being a wheelchair means that I am invisible.  Although people sometimes talk to me as if I'm old and senile when I use the cane, in a wheelchair people don't talk to me at all!  I know that people understand that there are perfectly intelligent people who are in wheelchairs, but I think the fact that you are not eye to eye when you are sitting in a chair does something to the power differential between people.  Someone sitting in a chair is not capable of much, and are treated that way.
In Adlerian Play Therapy, Terri Kottmann discusses the crucial C.'s.  These are things we all need to feel.  They are courage, capable, connect, and count.  Sometimes MS takes away all of those things.  And being a wheelchair, while it would definitely take some courage,  means you feeling are incapable, disconnected, and that you don't really come to the world and any  more.
So while using the cane is not something I am thrilled about, I am not sure that I am ready to forage in the world of tryiing to embody the crucial C's from a wheelchair.  The next time you see someone who is in a wheelchair looked at them in the eyes say hello just as you would someone else walking down the street.  Or I may have come over there and whack you with my cane.