travel – Just interabled Things

Spasms on vacation

Spastic Cerebral Palsy is the most common type of Cerebral Palsy. I have mild spastic CP where my left side is weaker then my right side of my body. I’ve always had stiff muscles and stretches have always helped, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that spasms started to effect me on a daily basis.

I remember the first time they happened vividly. Margaret and I were on our first vacation together in Boston in September of 2019. It was early in the morning and out of nowhere my legs just started flying up uncontrollably. Margaret woke up with me and went down to her car to get a heating pad and Advil to see if it would help because the pain was excruciating. She made a pit stop to grab food from the buffet but ended up dropping the entire bowl of cereal in the elevator, while the maid was in the elevator with her. I will never let her forget it. Anyways, after a few minutes the heating pad and an Advil worked and my spasms went away.

Following that vacation, spasms became a daily thing when my body is falling asleep, waking up, (especially during the winter and stormy weather). How do we deal with them you must be asking. Well honestly they are apart of our nightly routine now. Margaret does an amazing job keeping pressure on my legs often moving with me throughout the night so I can stay comfortable.

Margaret is not an angel, saint, or whatever else you want to call her for getting me through my spasms. It’s something that has become second nature to her and she wakes up with me each and every night to simply remind me she’s right here and that it’s only a few minutes of pain each time and it is not going to last past those few minutes. To be honest, not many people would be built for that, but Margaret has always been.

Have we mentioned?

For those of you that may not be aware, or those of you who do not follow our personal instagram pages which you totally should (@cmoerler93 and @ivegotthemaggic). We are engaged!!

image description: margaret’s left hand with engagement ring on it out in front of Charlie in his power wheelchair. Charlie is smiling.

We recently went to Disney, there will be another blog about our trip soon, and by recently I mean two months ago. But since then we have been enjoying the engaged life. We have set a date for our wedding and put a deposit down on a venue, which to me made it feel real that we are actually going to be married and spend our lives together. We have also had the opportunity to celebrate our engagement with our families, and apparently the place that we had our engagement dinner at, was the restaurant that my dad proposed to my mom. When he told me this it made everything more special since my mom passed only a few months ago. I had no idea that it was the same place until feet the fact, and it made it feel as though that was her being there.

The day that Charlie proposed, there was a rainstorm, as there is most days in central Florida and of course we continued to walk around in the rain because it felt good in the Orlando heat. As we were walking around in Epcot, there was a rainbow over the lagoon. And normally I would just smile at it and say “cool” but something told me that this was my mom telling me that she knew I was engaged and that she was happy for me.

Image description: margaret’s had stretched out showing off engagement ring. There is a rainbow in the background over the lagoon in the world showcases part of Epcot.

Like I mentioned before, we cannot wait to spend the rest of our lives together. Keep an eye on our blog and social medias for wedding updates and there will be more blogs about our experience with planning our interabled and accessible wedding.

Abilities Expo 2021

This past weekend we attended the Abilities Expo in Edison, New Jersey. It was an incredible experience. It was hands down the most inclusive place that either of us have ever been and we met some of the kindest people. One of my favorite parts was seeing older interabled couples because it gave Charlie and myself a glimpse into our future.

We met this woman name Kristy Lacroix. She is a travel agent that specialized in booking accessible vacations, this is inspired by traveling with her husband who has MS. The presentation she gave was very informative. She spoke about all the different places that are in fact accessible such as Alaska, South Africa, most of the Caribbean, Ireland, as well as cruising through Royal Caribbean and Disney. She even had a copy of the sign that she puts on her husband’s wheelchair for airplane travel. Her website is http://www.wheelchairescapes.com

The convention was an awesome experience for us as an interabled couple. I can say with confidence that this was one of the few times that we walked into a place and didn’t get looked at for having a wheelchair with us, and people did not assume I was Charlie’s aid, or his sister(one time I was asked if I was his mom, meanwhile Charlie is two years older than me).

Several different wheelchair manufacturers had booths and had products to try, some were even doing repairs. Seeing as Charlie does not often use his power chair and his manual chair is in good condition, we did not stop at any of those booths. There were several car companies that had vendors there as well, we did not check them out because we are not in the position to buy a new car just yet.

There was a dance company that did a few numbers that included able bodied dancers and wheelchair dancers. As someone who has danced her whole life and is limited in her dance abilities because of scoliosis sand being fused throughout almost her entire spine, it was incredible to see dancers of all abilities performing together. The name of the company is Dancing Wheels Company. They are located in Cleveland, and they perform all over, so if you ever get a chance, definitely check them out. I have a few clips that I’m including for you all.

[this video is owned by justinterabledthings]

This tap company, named Tap Dancing Hands Down, was definitely interesting to watch. The story of how it came to be hit close to home. The founder of the company was a dancer her whole life, her mom was also a dancer. Her mom had suffered a stroke and was no longer able to dance so the founder took a pair of black gloves and attached the tap parts of a tap shoe to the gloves so that her mom could still tap. I only have one video of them because the story hit too close to home having lost my mother a few months ago after a stroke in the beginning of 2020 and being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021(if any of you want me to post about that, let me know and I’ll gladly share my mother’s story).

[this video is owned by justinterabledthings]

Overall, the Abilties Expo was an amazing experience, I cannot wait to go back next year and continue to network with other interabled couples and be inspired and inspire others.

Calling out American Airlines

Recently American Airlines has said that will be banning power wheelchairs on their flights because of their weight; certain planes the weight limit for the chairs is 300 pounds and others it is 400 pounds. I have seen discrimination before and this is by far one of the most disgusting for of discrimination that I have seen. It is 2020, and the disabled community is still one of the most discriminated against communities. The world is not made for people with disabilities.

This ban is a disgusting display of abelism. An airline is not going to come out and say “we are banning white people,” or “we are banning black people” or why is it okay that they are essentially banning an entire community. There are some people that solely rely on power chairs every single day of their life, and they do not have another way of getting around or being independent. The way I look at it with the so called excuse of weight limit, what is the difference between saying that they are banning power chairs and them banning fat people who weight over 300 or 400 pounds. (and I am not trying to say that they should do that instead, I am not trying to say anything bad about fat people at all, or over weight people, whatever term they prefer to call themselves.)

The flying experience is already a traumatic enough experience for anyone with an type of disability. From personal experience it can be a very violating experience, personally my spine is fused for T2 to L3 and obviously it shows up on the body scan during the security check. The last time that I went through airport security I ad to be completely pat down my entire torso because of this. Charlie uses his manual chair at the airport, mind you that the two of us have not flown anywhere together yet, but from what he has told me, he gets pat down on every part of his body, and his AFO braces get swabbed down.

Airlines are also not always equipped to handle power chairs to begin with, I have heard horror stories by people that I follow online. Their chairs get destroyed and broken or pieces go missing. Also people that rely solely on their power chairs, already need to be out of their chair and they need to sit in the plane chairs which can be extremely uncomfortable and sometimes impossible for them without the use of pillows or even adaptive seats such as children’s car seats.

I have been beyond disgusted and angered by American Airlines an this ban. It really shows how disabled people rank in the world. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is systematic ranking of people in the world, we all know that straight white able bodied men are on the top of that ranking and it goes on from their. The disabled community is one of the most marginalized communities because of the way some people look at them, there are people that look at disabled people and just see them as a burden and nothing more than that. But this is a whole other topic that I can definitely get into on another day.

Get to know us

Hey everyone! Welcome to our blog, Traggically Maggical. Our names are Margaret and Charlie. We are in an interabled relationship. An interabled relationship is a relationship between someone who is disabled and a person who is not disabled. I, Margaret am the able bodied one in the relationship and Charlie is the disabled one. Charlie has Cerebral Palsy, otherwise known as CP, he uses crutches, a manual wheelchair as well as a motorized wheelchair. For the most part, he lives a relatively normal life. We look forward to sharing our lives with you and the places we go.