The first time I came into contact with AJM Healthcare, I was lying on my back in an East London hospital. It was fortunate I was even able to take their call. I’d largely lost the use of my hands, and if the phone hadn’t been left resting on my chest, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.
Also, I wasn’t feeling great. In the early stages of coming to terms with the fact I was paralysed, I had just been informed that the doctors wanted to drill a hole directly into my guts, inserting a plastic tube to drain away my urine, effectively making my penis redundant. It was proving quite a lot to take in.
Nonetheless, I answered.
The person on the other end said they were calling from my local wheelchair service. I sort of registered this was important. By this point, I’d started to get my head around the fact I was never going to walk again. Wheelchairs were going to be a big part of my life. But given I wasn’t going to be discharged for at least six months, I figured the local wheelchair service could wait until I was a bit more up for the conversation. I apologised, probably somewhat incoherently, and said I wasn’t able to talk right then. I assumed they would understand it wasn’t a good time, and call back later.
I assumed wrong.
A month or so went by. My mum was down from Merseyside, staying in my old flat in Walthamstow, while I remained in hospital. (I never saw that flat again. The stairs made it just another inaccessible location for me, my former home part of a cut-off world.) She checked the post and found a letter from AJM Healthcare’s Waltham Forest wheelchair service. It explained that because I had failed to engage when they called, I had been removed from the waiting list for wheelchairs.
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