Nanaimo access activist Terry Wiens has grown up with disability, lived through his adult years with that disability, and is now aging into senior years. Will his needs be met?
“I am one of those who retire early due to advanced decrepitude of a body that tolerated fifty-five years of the results of polio,” Terry Wiens writes on his blog Poster Child Perspectives. “I am part of a new phenomenon, disabled seniors.”
What the Nanaimo-based “access activist” refers to, more specifically, is “people who have grown up with some form of disability who are now hitting retirement age.” Wiens says he is part of a new phenomenon — disabled seniors who have lived a lifetime with disability — one that is different from seniors experiencing age-related health deterioration.
Aging with disability is different than aging without disability
Terry Wiens in Just One Man’s Opinion, one of his YouTube videos
Terry argues that fifty-seven years of utilizing a body in a way it wasn’t designed to has a price: “Shoulders and elbows were never designed to be weight bearing joints so almost fifty years on crutches takes a toll. My body also endured an often gluttonous and hedonistic lifestyle by its young driver, so I will take some responsibility for having to move into early retirement.”
I was fifty-seven at the time and not as ready for retirement as I should have been. I wasn’t as prepared financially, mentally or really in any other way for retirement but I had to deal with the reality of life. — Terry Wiens, Poster Child Perspectives blog
Wiens has had time to reflect back on his life, his experiences, and his understanding of disability: “The biggest realization I have had to date was that my wheelchair dependency was when I first became disabled. I just didn’t recognize it at the time. I went from a life time of doing whatever I wanted to on my crutches to a whole new world of restriction I hadn’t even noticed before.”
We speak with Terry Wiens.
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audio | #AccessActivist Terry Wiens @Druids #Nanaimo #disability #access #inclusion https://t.co/LQfmlWktVi pic.twitter.com/LRKsHOUSGW
— People First Radio (@peoplefirstrad) December 3, 2015
