Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Do wheelchair users walk in their dreams?”

This was a question posed on a forum I've started reading.  It seems its a complicated question with no easy answer.

My own personal experience is that in my dreams I know that I use a chair.  That I should be in a chair.  That when I meet someone new in a dream I HAVE to explain myself to them.  To tell them I have an SCI and that I can’t do everything they expect.  But then further in the dream I can tell that they are looking, questioning me when I seem to be able to go up dream stairs or climb a dream fence.  It’s a dream.  I can do these things in dreams.  But at the same time I feel that to a point I’m being judged.  I’m aware of this in my dreams because I’m aware of this in real life.

People sometimes look at me and think there’s a fat person in a chair.  Too lazy to walk.  I know it sounds paranoid.  To a point there is a certain amount of paranoia involved.  But it’s true.  I know it’s true because the VERY FIRST TIME I ever left the hospital I bumped into someone I once worked with and that’s exactly what he thought.

The Occupational Therapists were asking if there was anything I really wanted to do or know when they had got to the point where they’d shown me everything they felt was important.  I’d asked about public transport and it was decided that it would be a good idea to try it out, see how comfortable I was using it etc.

The day came and we decided to try the train system.  There was a train platform ½ mile from the hospital so two of the OTs and I trundled down to the platform and onto the train.  It all went without a hitch and we got off at the city centre. 

On the platform however, I bumped into a guy I’d worked with many years previous.  He came over and said “so you’re using this thing now then”.  It was the way that he said it and the look in his eye that made me question.  That made me have to justify myself.  I stopped and told that that yes I was “using this thing now” and explained to him why.  He apologised, passed on condolences etc but I was still in some way shocked that he thought I was in it by choice.  He was the very first person I’d met on my first day away from hospital and he’d thought I was using the chair by choice.

At the time it did annoy me but I don’t really think about it now.  I’m only writing about it because I’ve been thinking about my dreams and wondering if this experience is the route of why, in my dreams, I feel it’s so important to justify my chair.