How A Handicap Parking Permit Can Reinvent Patients’ Lives
Living with a disability is undoubtedly tough. Many of the things able-bodied people take for granted can become Herculean tasks to disabled people, or in some cases, are simply rendered impossible to achieve. Whether the disability is present from birth or the result of an accident or disease of some kind that interrupts a person’s life, implementing the adjustments required to improve the patient’s life can prove long and drawn-out – for both the disabled person and their surrounding friends and family. Some are quick fixes, but the majority of lifestyle changes take a little while to get used to, even if they’re quick to set up.
Around 56.7 million people in the U.S.A. are disabled, totalling about 19% of the population. We tend to think of disability in people as a rare phenomenon, but when you consider that almost one in five people battle with some form of disability or another, it’s evident that disabled people form a large part of our society. Remember, a disability doesn’t always mean the person is confined to a bed or a wheelchair; they can have other, unseen disabilities that affect their lives in numerous other ways.
Of course, for most disabled people, and for the people we traditionally think of as disabled, mobility is the major issue. Whether the patient suffers from something like morbid obesity, which severely constricts their movement, or is bound to a wheelchair, making it much harder to navigate public spaces, freedom of movement is always on the mind of the disabled patient. And rightly so; able-bodied people take the ability to move around as we please for granted a lot of the time. In terms of public spaces, everywhere is accessible, and we don’t have to think twice before taking a trip to the local mall, catching a film at the nearest cinema, visiting the doctor for a check-up, or even grabbing the mail from our postbox.
For the disabled person, any of the above could prove a severe challenge, and routinely does on a day-to-day basis. Although by law many public places are outfitted with handicap access and disabled bathrooms, the true key to allowing handicapped patients to move freely around their home city is a handicap parking permit. It can truly change their lives, as it unlocks a whole host of options for the disabled when they’re out and about, without the worry and stress of finding a parking space that will physically allow them to complete their activity. One of the most mentally debilitating aspects of living with a disability is being potentially confined not only to a wheelchair, but also a room, or a house. A parking spot they can rely on means the world to disabled people, and should be something everyone living with a disability has access to.
When most of us drive past handicap parking spaces, we tend not to bat an eye. But for disabled people they are a lifeline, and one of the first things that should be acquired by the recently disabled is that all-important handicap parking permit. Even if the patient has been disabled for some time, it’s never too late to avail of a disabled parking spot, if you’re entitled to one. But therein lies a catch-22 situation for a lot of disabled people; if they’re unable to leave the house to get to a doctor’s office to acquire the handicap parking permit, how exactly will they get it?
The answer is telemedicine. These days, many clinic consultations can be done from home using laptops, tablets, and an internet connection. Telemedicine is the method by which disabled patients can be granted the benefits they are entitled to, number one on their list being the all-important disabled parking permit. In today’s world of digital interfaces, instant communication and online interactions, there’s no reason why telemedicine shouldn’t be the method of choice for anyone who’s too impaired to visit a doctor’s office. It’s also cost-effective, and allows the doctors on the other end of the line to consult with more patients in a day – making it an attractive proposition for them too, and one that many hospitals and clinics are embracing as 2017 draws to a close.
Most of us able-bodied folk just consider parking spaces as somewhere to put our car for a few hours. They’re a small facet of life that can sometimes be frustrating (if we can’t find one!), but we invariably put very little thought into the mechanisms of it all. For many disabled patients, a handicap parking permit means much more than simply a guaranteed place to park. It’s all about mobility. To the millions of disabled people across the country, it represents an assurance that their needs are taken care of, while at the same time providing more possibilities for their day-to-day activities, making it easier to live, travel, and enjoy life. This applies to a range of disorders, and also applies whether the disability is permanent or transitory.