'Wine, Bed and Roses' By Phyllis Rappaport.

I am sitting in my new electric double bed. It is Friday 3rd April. I am sipping a glass of red wine with cheese and biscuits. The roses are coming. The coffee is here and with Pavorotti singing masterly in the background.

Such indulgence may first appear extravagant. I have been waiting the best part of a year to get this electric bed through PADP, (Program & Appliances for Disabled People). The problem was that the present guidelines of PADP did not allow the program to purchase a bed of this kind, in a double size of my choice. They could fund single or three-quarter size beds but not the double. The double size in such a bed was not considered to be basic equipment that would aid or enhance my mobility. Even though I am a married woman. I have been married for some thirty years.

This lineal attitude doesn't allow disabled people as myself to be perceived and seen as adult sexual intelligent free choosing people who are living in stable marital relationships.

My husband is my carer and in both these roles he suffered from the 'public exposure' of our lives and the inconvenience and stresses the additional time and 'labour' it took in getting the bed to the coalface. Married or not, the size of bed should have been my own free choice. I consider the Health Professionals did not give to me the respect and rights that they would have accorded to a non-disabled married woman.

A bed is a much more personalised space for a person with a disability, than even a wheelchair, and that personal space may be shared with another person, who may or may not be the carer/spouse/partner of the person with a disability. It must be remembered that people with disabilities are not asexual people.

In my case the price of the bed wasn't a great deal more between the three-quarter and the double size. It seemed to be systemic guideline that the PADP Program felt they could not alter. Was it because that change in the guidelines would inevitably bring about a need by the Health Sector to perceive and seen people with disabilities in a whole new light? Oh! They are equal to us now. They are really the same as us. In other words, by this gauge, we, people with disabilities, are normal.

Each one of us needs to be recognised as human beings with intelligence, talents, and gifts to give and receive from others. If this recognition does not take place then our very state of being is invalidated. We all need to be recognised as people. We have to recognise humanness in ageing, disability colour or ethnic and religious difference.

If the Health Professionals and the Program 'Makers' turned around their thinking of 'People with Disabilities' as being equal in the eyes of society, as people standing, sitting, alongside these other people with professions, in expertisms. This would quickly require a new ideology for sharing of ideas and experiences between these two sets of people who are now equal without superiority over the other.

People who have disabilities have a wealth of experience to share with those in society who are not disabled. It is only by sharing and giving out to other people that we can receive experiences and knowledge that will enlighten our thinking.

As a British writer, Simon Brissenden, as envisaged for people with disabilities for true holistic independence, he writes:

"The point is that independentPeople who have controlOver their lives, not that theyPerform every task themselves. Independence is not linkedTo the physical or intellectualCapacity to care for oneselfWithout assistance; independenceIs created by having assistanceWhen and how one requires it."

For the original and full article http://www.wwda.org.au/wine.htm