Day 7 (pg.144-167)

• he found that many companies would not hire people who had a wheelchair
• he found it hard to get around at Columbia University because there was not a lot of wheelchair accessible ways to get from one place to another (because of the stairs)
• he wrote a letter to the president of Columbia explaining the problem and they spent about 700,000 dollars in changes for it to be wheel chair accessible
• he felt that this gave him power and he thought that this was the only time since he was in a wheelchair that he had been truely respected and heard
• it is fairly hard to get a job when you are disabled, and the money that you get from medicare, and for having a disability that stops you from working is very little
• six months after his spinal cord surgery, he began to notice that he was on a very low plateau
• his exercises showed no further improvement
• his physiotherapy was not helping much either
• one day in 1978 he noticed that he could not raise his right leg high enough to get it on to the foot rest, but he could do it every so often
• the tumour began to keep growing
• and from 1977 to 1979 his left foot kept draging more and more heavily on the floor, and the right leg could not move as far forward anymore
• in 1978 he gave up walking for the fear of falling, but he could still stand, and walk a few steps with his walker
• in November of 1978 he went to stand up to get into a car, but he could not