Just another day in the life...



Phoenix Group bake sale, 9/24/10
From left to right: Genevieve Smith, Jackie Conley, Chelsea Cellars and Cara Liebowitz

 On Friday, September 24, I volunteered to sit at a table to try and get people to buy baked goods from a bake sale table for the Phoenix Group, a Kutztown University club dedicated to spreading disability awareness, of which I am currently the president.

As you can see from the picture above, there were lots of baked goods, flyers, and to the right of Cara was a tri-fold poster and other giveaways (pens and koozies) as well as a sign-up sheet. All of this, with a few exceptions, was in my apartment. Now, because I walk with crutches, there was no way I was going to be able to carry all of that to the other side of campus. So when we announced the bake sale at our meeting prior, we made sure to find someone that could stop by my apartment beforehand to help me carry stuff over. Thanks to Chelsea (and a very kind boyfriend, who is not a member) the materials were transported across campus safely.

But there is never a dull moment...

The day before the bake sale was just like any other day, full of meetings, classes, and appointments. On my way to a meeting, I realized that things didn't feel right as I walked, and a strange sound was coming from my crutches. I examined them to see where the problem was, and to my surprise the rubber end of my crutch (also known as a crutch tip) had a rip in it. A few more days of walking on it would cause it to rip, and then I would be walking solely on the pole-part of my crutch, which doesn't help someone who has bad balance. So, knowing that I had to be somewhere the next day, I had to scramble and hope that my one friend, who has a car on campus, could get me to a local drug store as soon as possible. Luckily she came through, and after a trip to two different drug stores, we found the tips. The next step was getting the old tips off and the new ones on, which is not nearly as easy as it sounds. You can't simply pull them off. You have to cut them off with an exacto knife or box cutter. And again, luckily for me, a helpful boyfriend was able to get the old ones off with a pearing knife (I live in a college dorm, I don't have exacto knives lying around). Thankfully, no one was hurt in the process, either.

Once I could finally walk safely, we went back to the bake sale to help wrap up the event and transport the Phoenix Group materials back to my room (again with help from someone volunteering at the table).

Hopefully some of you got a laugh from this post. This is just another day in the life I live. Hopefully these crutch tips hold up for a while. Did I mention the old tips were only 3 months old?