On May 1st, I got to have the pleasure of meeting the gentlemen at the Bridgewater Fire Department in Bridgewater, MA. As many of you know, my mother's side of the family comes from a long line of Paramedics, EMTs, and Fire Fighters. I have grown with an understanding of how important emergency situations are. My cousin Dick, who runs emergency services schooling programs and I were talking one day about what it means to be in the middle of an emergency crisis and to have a disability on top of that. There are many times that I have been stuck in elevators, stuck on wheelchair lifts in the air, etc, these are situations that able bodied individuals do not have to deal with. It was my intention to go into the firehouse and explain that we as a disabled community are very grateful to the emergency rescue workers who come to our aid in these situations. I also wanted to take this time as a teaching tool to teach the newbie fire fighters that these are situations, although they may not come across them often, are really near and scary to us. No one wants to be stuck up in the air.
I need to take the time to thank the chief and fire fighters who graciously gave me a tour, made me laugh, and took the time out of their busy schedule at 9:00 AM from pulling busy night shifts to listen to what I had to say. I am forever grateful to have this experience because this is the Empower part of my platform. I can take time to make people realize how important, even the littlest changes in a rescue can make a person with a disability feel at ease and let's face it, as you can tell by the picture, these guys aren't bad looking. I might be Ms. Wheelchair Mass., but I am still a single lady, so even advocacy has it's perks. Until next time, Advocate, Educate, Empower.
