They think they are being helpful!

I have a powered wheelchair from the NHS and I normally send my son to get fish and chips every four months or so he finds it really difficult because some of the neighbours are very nosy and rude and he often finds that he can't get in line because he's avoiding them. The fish barn have been great and have noticed that he is holding back waiting to the side and generally finding it difficult and always orders the same thing. This month he was really sick and I've just had breast cancer operation so I was reducing the amount that I drive because I'm getting very sore from using my arm and decided to on a very very rare occasion actually go down to the fish band myself. The dinner lady comes up behind me and says she doesn't want to have a go at me but I should really go and get some lights fitted to my powered wheelchair. I was so thrown a back because I didn't realize she was there as a cyclist she had no lights on that I could see from behind and she was making no noise. The parts of got a nasty slope on them due to they're being many driveways on the road so I decided to go down the road as nobody else was using it.

The only thing I could think of at the time to explain why I didn't have any lights is that it's an NHS wheelchair and the I would let them know. Obviously those of us with wheelchairs no that you can't really adapt or change your NHS wheelchair especially when you've only just got it and you're just getting used to it the fact that the lady who made this comment has a down syndrome brother I would have expected with her a better empathy and understanding however a lot of the nasty comments have come from her including being told that I should just get out of my wheelchair and push it over a step at the bottom of the village ramp and told that because I'm not reliant on my wheelchair that obviously I'm not disabled and I'm just faking it. So there's a lot of history with this woman and we normally don't say anything to each other wave to each other or have any pleasantries because of the fact that she has been extremely rude and physically verbally attacking us in the past. As a result the area in which I live in has become toxic.

I was quite upset by what she said but I chose to laugh it off when I saw a post about the bingo she was talking about to the chip fan being advertised on the local group.

I thought by throwing a little bit of humor at it we might be able to laugh off the situation and come to an understanding where they know that he is not acceptable to be telling somebody that they need to wear lights for visibility is totally unacceptable when they don't tell people that are walking up from the train station wearing all black the same thing. That's kind of a double standards thing going on and it really bugged me secretly but I was willing to laugh it off that is until I got this response!

None of my community has helped in the situation and I had to have somebody that I volunteer with for a charity come down from Lancashire to cover the few days that I was going in for surgery because there are no local charities here and no local support not even somebody that could go and get the shopping for me so I was already frustrated and just literally wanted to get to the end of the road and get myself some food that night because my son was sick and he didn't want to eat dinner so I didn't want to cook for both of us when he wasn't eating.

I basically thought that I would go for a nice treat as well you can understand from being a single disabled parent with cancer it can be a little bit stressful especially considering what I've had to go through with fighting and advocating for my own right to actually have the surgery in the first place I was at like 120 odd days from the emergency referral. I'd had an absolutely terrible time of it because I was allergic to the lidocaine and they gave me an ultimatum of either accepting that or not having the biopsy and then that led to further delays and then ended up getting a transfer of care to another hospital because they were literally just so many red flags.

The way that the community have continued to treat me with such narcissistic abusive tendencies has always played on me but this is just really taking the p especially when the next comment was "yeah I was thinking of coming out of my driveway in my car and I didn't see you at first you really should get some lights on that thing!"

I'm sorry but what the actual f is going through these people's minds?!? I could have been just walking down the road as a normal able-bodied person to go and get my fish and chips and they would have all said nothing at all but because I'm in a wheelchair they all feel that they suddenly need to have an opinion and are rallying around the inappropriate comment rather than joining in and having a laugh they've all taken it seriously and I honestly just don't know what the actual f*** to think right now I'm not being funny but considering leaving your driveway when your car isn't even on like I'm just hoping that the community here can kind of help because I never use my wheelchair in the dark for the main reason that as everybody knows you can't actually see where you're going in order to make sure you don't have pot holes and God knows what else.

I think they all think they're being helpful but actually at this point it's abusive and hurtful!