Most days, I am a generally healthy person. While not athletic or anything, I led a life that allowed me to live actively and independently. I ate well. I walked to and from work, about a mile a day. I walked whenever I can instead of taking public transport. By choice, because I could.

Imagine my horror when one morning after work, I slipped and twisted my ankle in a freak accident. I had just finished my groceries and was ready to cross the street (my apartment was just another street over). With a bag of groceries in one hand and a gallon and a half of water in the other, I looked both ways and stepped off the sidewalk.

Turns out, there was a slippery part I didn’t see because my concentration was on not getting hit by incoming traffic. As mentioned, I had twisted my ankle and sat on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what the hell to do.

With a bit of dumb luck and some necessary guts, I crossed the 4-lane avenue with all my things without any help (although my mom believes my late father somehow helped me do that). I finally made it across but was still a street away from where I lived. I sat on the sidewalk and called my sister, a doctor, to seek her advice. No answer. Turns out, she was preparing for work. The security guard at the corner fast food chain recognized me and offered to help me walk and carry my things. He eventually carried me up the stoop and into the elevator lobby, and helped me into my apartment. That’s when I finally was able to speak with my sister, who (bless her) skipped a day of work to come get me and then take me to the hospital.

At the hospital, they immediately got me in a wheelchair, sent me in for an X-ray, and gave me first aid (ice compress, pain meds, bandage). Thankfully my medical coverage from my new job had already started! Initial diagnosis was a bruised muscle and not a broken or dislocated bone, but a follow-up revealed I had torn a ligament on my ankle. Yes, it was that bad. I guess you could say that when I fall, I fall hard. Obviously I was absent from work until the end of that week, but it turns out my journey was far from over.

A little over 7 months to the day since my accident, I’m still not completely recovered. After my latest MRI, the doctor advised a couple more weeks of immobilizing my foot, trying out a certain healing injection for musculoskeletal called PRP, and to go to therapy.

So yeah, I’m still temporarily disabled and will take a long while for me to almost completely heal. Here’s what I have learned so far. If you or someone you know was, or is physically disabled, you might learn something too.

You Can Still Do Things, But at a Limited Capacity

Even the simplest tasks you took for granted become a huge challenge. While waiting for my sister to arrive after I was carried into my apartment by a complete stranger, I had to literally crawl on the ground to get an ice pack, go to the bathroom, or get back to my bed.

These days, wearing my air cast allows me to lead a sort of normal life. I still need a walking cane to balance myself sometimes (especially going up and down stairs) but everything else I was doing prior to the injury is now relatively normal albeit of limited capacity. I can’t run, but I can walk just fine with minimal pain.

Even with the Best Intentions, People Can Hurt You

I know it sounds emo, but this is the sad truth about empathy or lack thereof. In addition, people think they’re helping, but might actually make things worse. Or sometimes they think they know exactly what you’re going through and would say an ignorant or mean thing about it. Case in point, the same man who offered to carry me to my apartment was only trying to help, but he insisted on massaging my foot thinking it was only dislocated.

As Filipinos, people often think “hilot” is the solution to everything. I was already yelping and crying but he told me to suck it up (What. The. Fuck.) and I was this close to yelling that he’s not a doctor and should just stop. But for fear of being left alone or getting physically hurt, I nicely asked him to stop and to just please continue helping me back to my apartment. In retrospect, that “hilot” he performed may have made my injury worse even though he only wanted to help.

Funny enough, you will also get weird looks from people, weird reactions, or even negative comments. Sometimes it’s out of ignorance (half the time I think they don’t realize my injury at all or until it’s too late), and sometimes it’s just because people are too focused on their own agendas like trying to get to their work on time.

And You Will Get Help from the Completely Unexpected

As with the aforementioned security guard who literally carried me up to my apartment, other people I do not know well or don’t know at all have offered help even when I didn’t ask them to.

People at work or from my office building would offer to help walk me, especially when I was still in crutches, or would allow me to get into the elevator first before them.

Complete strangers approached me and my family in Hong Kong when they saw us trying to go up the stairs and would point us to where there’s an elevator/escalator, despite the language barrier.

A motorcycle driver from Angkas gave me a discounted fare without the need to (my fare was Php75 and he said something along the lines of, “just pay me Php50, that’s okay”).

The place I ordered food frequently from voluntarily asked for a scan of my PWD ID, assuming I had one, so they could give me a discount. I appreciated that gesture, which is in my opinion, quite rare here. They instead gave me a discount for ordering my daily meals a month in advance, which was just as nice.

One of the ladies at a Pharmacy in Honolulu called me over when she saw my injury, allowing me to essentially cut in line even though I was okay with waiting for the 2 or 3 people ahead of me to finish with their purchases. I never expect it, but it’s always nice when someone offers.

You Need to Rest If You Wanna Get Better

People who know me well know that I’m a very active person and perpetually engaged in activities all the time, so much that I barely sleep. It’s been a running joke among my friends and family that I don’t even sleep at all or that I may be a vampire. Another running joke is that the word “relax” is not in my vocabulary.

However, as one would expect, one of the things doctors told me is to rest, rest, and rest. My accident happened a week shy of my dad’s death’s one-month anniversary. So it was a mix of both the pain from this injury and my dealing with the loss of my father, but for the past half year or so, I’ve mostly been in bed, watching Netflix and not being as productive as I’d like to be.

For a good month or so, my sister was living in my apartment helping me out as well. It was a huge adjustment for someone like me. It’s times like this that made me realize that I needed to slow down and rest, and that while I could make it in life alone, I still need others.

You Can Travel, Often as Priority or Even at a Discount

I had plans of traveling to my boyfriend that month, who’s currently based in Hawaii. I was allowed to travel by plane (it was a direct flight), but I also had to let my airline know I needed help. My sister called the airline on my behalf, to request assistance.

At the airport, I had a wheelchair since the start, and was given assistance upon arrival as well. They also got me an aisle wheelchair within the plane, and got me in an aisle seat that’s close to the entrance and bathroom. People with wheelchair assistance are boarded first, before or at the same time as First Class passengers, but you deplane last. Same as when I traveled with my family and had wheelchairs requested not just for myself but also for my mom. We even got priority at immigration as a group, which was kinda nice.

During our flight from Hong Kong back to Manila, most of our family ended up in Premium Economy, upgraded for free. Slightly bigger seats with a little more leg room, which was nice. It was mostly because the flight was full and we needed to sit together (my mom is a senior citizen with foot problems too, and was also in a wheelchair at the airport).

Most, if not all, airlines in the Philippines also give a 20% discount to persons with disability for local travel. I have not tried this, since for one, I do not have a PWD ID, and two, I have not traveled locally by plane since my injury. But it’s a nice thought if you’re in a similar situation and need to travel someplace, to see your family or go to your hometown perhaps.

It’s Super Costly to Be Injured or Disabled

I swear, the timing could not be more right – I had just been given my medical insurance coverage from work when my accident happened. If not, the cost of x-rays and consulting at the ER alone would’ve been a huge blow to my savings.

The air cast alone cost quite much, over Php7,000 (about $150), which is sometimes half the salary of a lot of people in the Philippines. And my cast was the cheaper kind – there’s others that cost as much as twice that. Imagine if similar (or worse) injuries happen to people in lower classes of life – where in the world would they get that kind of money. I learned from my sister, who used to be a doctor at a health center for repatriated sailors, that some would buy or actually “rent” used air casts just to save money.

In addition, the pain meds, my walking cane, topicals, follow-up checkups, and other costs are just monumental. And I’m not even that badly injured compared to others!

I had also realized that because instead of walking to work, I’m now required to book a carpool/ride share/motorcycle to get to and from the office – which means a huge chunk of my salary now goes to costly fares.

For a time, I also could not cook or do groceries, or order my meds (the grocery concierge service in the Philippines, HonestBee, has been out of commission for months). So I would resort to buying through food ordering services – it’s more expensive to buy cooked meals than it is to buy and prepare your own food, plus the delivery charges have been increasing for many of the restaurants.

You Get Discounts on Food, Medicine, and Transportation

If you have a PWD ID, you are entitled to a 20% discount and VAT-exempt for food, medicine, transportation, and even certain groceries. While I do not have this, it’s essentially the same as my mom’s senior citizen ID – and she enjoys those benefits to an extent. It’s a huge deal and it could help you reallocate those funds into either your savings or your other medical expenses.

You Start to Empathize with Other PWDs

When you’re fully healthy, you don’t really realize how good you’ve got it. Now, in the very desperate times I need to walk that 700-ish meters/half a mile to work (because hello, it’s so hard to book a carpool or motorcycle these days), I have to not only struggle with crossing the street fast enough while limping in order to not get hit by oncoming traffic. There’s also ledges and sidewalks that do not have a PWD ramp, or it does but is blocked by cars, street vendors, and sometimes even by electric or telephone posts.

Honestly, this country is not PWD-friendly. A lot of the buildings in Makati City, where I currently live and work, have stoops you have to walk up before getting to the main lobby. Ramps aren’t always a thing, and it’s often steeply inclined because they’re not for wheelchairs – they’re for wheeling equipment. In public transportation, sadly a lot of people here don’t give a flying fuck if you’re disabled or old, or both.

I remember a couple of years back, the female/PWD/senior citizen caboose at the MRT was so full. Read: a can of sardines. I was lucky enough to have a seat back then, but then a pregnant lady came in and I could tell she was having a hard time. On the next stop, I stood up (it was super hard to do so!) and told her she can take my seat. Another woman sarcastically complained, out loud, “Oh sure, give the seat to the pregnant chick.” I was appalled. This is one of many cases of the lack of empathy and understanding that, in my experience, is a bad trait of many Filipinos when it comes to the disabled and for our senior citizens.

It Humbles You but Doesn’t Define You

I had a coworker who was a runner and triathlete, and got into an accident a couple of years back. She is paralyzed now from the neck down. But her amazing personality still shines through. She still posts on Facebook a lot, and she is nothing but inspiring. You’d see her posting with hashtags like #fuquadriplegia and I’ve seen her in adaptive e-bikes still being active to the best of her now-limited physical abilities.

My late father had been limping since he had a gun-related accident in 1989 until his death. Long story short, there was a bullet stuck in his left leg and it has monumentally changed his life. While I’m sure he had his own struggles both physically and internally, he still went above all of that and lived his life as normal as he possibly could. Prior to his accident, he was even more active than I was, and he was in his mid-40s then. He did karate and other martial arts, among other cool things. After the accident, he was still able to walk and bike daily as his exercise, in addition to performing on stage as an accomplished and award-winning Elvis Presley tribute artist.

If there’s one major thing I learned from all of this, is that being disabled, temporarily or otherwise, especially if you were relatively healthy prior to it is that it humbles you. However, it does not define you, no matter how long it will be or if it’s permanent. Just look at the last two people I described. My situation is nowhere near theirs and yet they have risen above no matter how challenging it can be.