 Good morning my beautiful internet friends. Here's the thing, I am in no way sincerely from the bottom of my heart. I don't think I ever have been in any way prejudiced against anyone who uses any kind of mobility aid, wheelchairs in particular. I am deeply prejudiced against using wheelchairs in my own life and this has caused problems and is continuing to cause them and I thought I'd come clean about it. So let's have a little heart to heart shall we? This past weekend I was in Dallas, Texas. I posted a bunch of pictures on my Instagram linked down below. It was a really great experience but I only brought my eye walk. I don't actually have a wheelchair that I can use. I do have like a hundred dollar wheelchair from Walgreens where someone can push me. I used it briefly after surgery only to get out of house when I could not walk without like passing out from being in pain and being exhausted. So I went to a all-day conference where there were thousands and thousands of people and I had to do a lot of walking, an absence of Uber so we did a lot of walking and my stubbornness where I made myself do a lot of walking with just the eye walk. Now you'll remember this video in which I said so the eye walk is an awesome short-term solution but it is not designed to be used every day for hours a day because that is not how our bodies work. We're trying to be really careful with it and decide when it's worth it to use it. I'm also switching to crutches sometimes which kind of crushes my soul a little bit. I'm trying to walk less on the eye walk, give my knee a break, blah blah blah. That's obviously going really well by the fact that I walked probably a couple miles a day at least one or two of the days that I was down there. And at the end of the weekend a situation came up that kind of brought to my attention that I think I need to just like bury my pride because it's injuring my life and my body but it's really hard for me. I don't know why ever since I first injured my ankle I like refuse to ever be pushed in a wheelchair like if I went to the grocery store and I was on crutches when I was like 14 I would crutch around gosh darn it and mom would always be like let's get you a wheelchair and I'd be like no mom I've got this. I think it's an independence thing where like I want to be able to I don't even know if that's it because actual wheelchairs that you can maneuver yourself do give you a lot of independence but I have never been able to stomach the idea of other people pushing me around. I just don't like it unless it's absolutely necessary and so the whole weekend went on it actually was okay like my knee wasn't terrible I took care of it at the end of every night I just doused it in blue emu which is like this numbing green again I'll link that down below if you're interested in what it is but it helps me a little bit so I just like tried to like kill the nerves and numb the pain but the day that we had to fly home I woke up with a migraine and my leg really hurt and my knee was messed up and I only had the eye walk and so I'll tell you what going to an airport when you have a migraine is not my idea of a fun time it was pretty rough and I was doing pretty rough and my friends were absolutely lovely I went down there with two of my friends and they were great they helped me out so much I mostly did a lot of refusing their help because I have problems accepting help and I was doing a fine job hopping through the you know airport suffering along just doing a good job of not accepting help and taking care of myself and I they had me sit on a bench while they went and like took care of ticketing or whatever came back and they had a wheelchair looked up and my friend Josie was like you can murder us later because I think she knows how I feel about this Josie by the way thank you I love you and I was like I just I might uh but at that point it was like I can't say no like I couldn't say no they literally had it there and they were like no we are going to help you because you were obviously in a lot of pain and internally I was kind of like ticked off about it I was like no like this is when I want I can do it myself like I'm fine blah blah blah and it turns out it was really helpful and definitely helped my migraine to be able to close my eyes at least going through the airport if nothing else and so that was really helpful if there's one thing I truly hate it is being in a wheelchair and my head was really hurting and my leg was hurting and my friends were terrible people aka really good friends and forced a wheelchair on me so uh so I just said okay and I accepted the help and guess what it actually helped so thank you Josie and Amanda and here's another step towards actually accepting help and not doing everything yourself oh but I hate it oh but there's something I just hate it and I was thinking about the next trip I have coming up today because I am going to the EpiT Coalition's conference down in San Antonio I've never been to Texas before but I'm going there twice in two weeks and my mom really wants to bring like the push wheelchair that we have I've been fighting her on it and I had told her like yeah just bring it just to bring it and I was literally about to text her you know what don't worry about it I did fine with the eye walk all conference weekend like let's not even bring that extra possibly very helpful tool that could save me pain and suffering and I thought about it and I was like Joe what are you doing seriously what are you doing I was talking to one of the friend of mine online a couple days ago and I was mentioning how the eye walk was hurting my knee and he's also an amputee and he was like yeah I use the eye walk a lot I found that you know wheelchair actually worked a lot better for me because it didn't hurt me and it still gave me a lot of independence and I was like oh maybe I should consider that now my house does not allow for wheelchair use very well uh it's three levels to get in from the garage there's there's a stair like it's just not very wheelchair accessible or friendly but I'm wondering if it might be a good time to break down and apply to insurance to help pay for one that I could actually manage myself and not have to have someone else push me side note there is no badge of courage or accomplishment in riding the struggle bus and like struggling along and having a hard time or an unnecessary suffering and I think somewhere along the line I got it in my head that like it was better to have a harder time if it meant that I was doing it myself it was like giving in or a bad thing or somehow lesser if I made my life easier breaking it down like that makes no sense and I honestly do think that there is strength in accepting help I think that there is strength in admitting that you need something I think what I'm trying to say is I am struggling to find that strength and it is it is a um I'm still in the gym for that one I have not reached the peak of accomplishing that just yet but I am literally making this video and I'm going to publish it as a way of forcing myself to accept help in this case that means allowing my mom to bring the wheelchair as a backup option I'm not committing to letting anyone use it I'm just saying it's going to be there in case I need it because I think I repeatedly shoot myself in the foot I just push myself way too hard for what I don't know it's just so important to me that like I have that independence but again I have literally never thought that someone using a wheelchair was not independent like I don't have that thought about other people but as soon as it's about me I get so upset and so angry and so flustered and frustrated it's a real punch in the gut trying to stomach pride and like clamp that down it's hard and mostly my friends have to either like corner me or force me into helping me which is really that's not a nice thing for me to do to them and I've talked in other videos about how you're really because it's true you're taking away someone else's joy by being able to help you because I'm someone who loves helping other people sincerely it's great and when people are constant like no I don't need your help it's kind of pushing people away so like I know what I'm doing but I keep doing it sometimes so this week I am very actively consciously focusing on stopping that and I feel like a conference for amputees is a good place to talk to people about that and to actually focus on accepting a little bit more help bit by bit so what is something that you have trouble accepting help on or are you on the flip side of the coin and you are totally fine asking for an accepting help if that's the case I would love to know your secret or any advice if you are going to be at the conference I would absolutely love to run into you let me know if you'll be there I'll be looking out for people to say hey to there as always a huge thank you goes out to all my patrons over on patreon it's kind of like an online tip jar and I really appreciate all of you guys there it's an amazing little community that we have growing there I couldn't do this without you guys thank you before reading your comments down below I love you guys I'm thinking of you and I'll see you in the next video bye guys