Word Celebrity Blog

Living With A Disability


































The double-amputee and RAF hero, Douglas Bader spent a lot of time visiting with and encouraging the disabled.  He raised money for disabled people and worked to change the public's attitude attitudes towards amputees.




















The Douglas Bader Foundation was formed in honor of Douglas Bader in 1982, by family and friends — many that werealso former RAF pilots who had flown with Douglas Bader during the Second World War.




















The Foundation's headquarters are located at Douglas Bader's former home in west London.


























This plaque was placed at DouglasBader's former home in Petersham Mews, Kensington, west London.




















The Douglas Bader House in Fairford is now the headquarters for the RAF Charitable Trust.


Douglas Bader’s Own Thoughts,
Views and Experiences
Relating To Living With A Disability


“To my way of thinking, a disabled man who has achieved independence is no longer disabled”


The following are Sir Douglas Bader’s own thoughts, views and experiences relating to life with a disability.  Sir Douglas Bader did not mean for it to be a manual or book of instruction, but it is merely one man’s view of his disability.

"The difficulty of discussing a personal disability such as the loss of an arm or a leg or eyes is that it affects different people differently. That seems such an obvious remark as to be not worth recording. I record it simply to affirm that what I write expresses my personal experience and conviction. Someone else writing about an identical disability would almost certainly react in a totally different way."

"The details of how I acquired my disability (the loss of one leg below the knee and the other leg above the knee) are of no consequence in this chapter. The fact remains that I lost my two legs at the age of 21 and went through the same pain and grief in the first few weeks and months that everyone else has experienced under similar conditions."

"One phenomenon of interest is that during the time I was convalescing and before I had anything to do with artificial legs, I used to dream more frequently than before or since. Always in my dreams I was whole; in other words I had my legs. The cause of this frequent dreaming was undoubtedly due to the loss of legs being on my mind. The fact that in my dreams I had my flesh and blood legs was, I believe, because my subconscious mind had no knowledge or experience of artificial limbs, and therefore was unaware of them. As soon as I received my artificial legs and they became part of my normal life I ceased to dream of those I had lost and have never done so since."


















Four of Clontarf Orphans walking with Douglas Bader.


"When we are young, vigorous and healthy it never crosses our mind that a catastrophe may occur to us. It is rather like fighting in wartime. We never envisage our own death – it is always the other chap. When,  therefore, a catastrophe occurs it is interesting at a much later date to look back and recollect one’s immediate reaction."

"In my own case – and many must have experienced the same thing – the shock of the event was cushioned over several weeks. In other words there was no single instant of impact. During the years that followed my accident, people have said “Wasn’t it an awful shock when you knew that you had lost your legs?”, and the answer quite truthfully was “No”. By the time the weeks had passed and I had appreciated the loss of my legs, the fact had ceased to impress me. The effort to stand and walk upright on two artificial legs was yet to come. Meanwhile I did not need legs for anything. I was comfortably installed in bed, looked after by kind and sympathetic nurses. The sole requirement was to get physically strong once more."

"The biggest disappointment that I had was the initial difficulty of trying to operate the artificial legs when I first got them. Having always been of an athletic nature and knowing nothing about artificial legs I thought during my convalescence that once I got them I should wander around after a day or two quite normally. When I went for my first fitting of these legs and actually put them on and tried to stand up on them, I never thought that I would ever move them. With a strong man each side of me, having been levered to my feet, I stood there as far as I was concerned nailed to the ground with no conscious balance if I let go of my two supporters. After a certain amount of time, trouble and a great deal of sweat I began to get some inkling of how to operate the artificial knee of the right leg."



















"The initial fitting of a pair of artificial legs is not easy. The recipient of them has no idea whether they are comfortable or otherwise, because even if they fitted perfectly they would still feel so uncomfortable he wouldn’t know."

"After battling away for several days during the course of which I spent a good deal of time on the ground, my mind and my reflexes gradually acquired the method of movement needed, and then as always it suddenly came with a rush and did not seem so difficult. During those first days I never used a stick or a crutch, partly out of obstinacy but also because I never minded falling down. I have noticed since that the chaps who walk best are those who are not worried by an occasional fall. I believe that many people use a stick because they think it will help them maintain their balance and prevent them falling. In fact the reverse is the case. A stick may help some people to retain their balance, but, once they have started to fall it certainly won’t stop them, it will merely get in the way. It may even cause them to injure themselves by trying to avoid falling down instead of letting themselves go and then getting up. Perhaps the real answer whether to use a stick or not can only be a personal one. Some people by nature have a less developed sense of balance than others. My own point of view is simply this: the use of a stick if you don’t need it provides a negative approach to the problem rather than a positive one. In other words, if you have a stick your mind automatically approaches the problem from the point of view of trying to avoid falling down which is the negative approach. The positive approach surely is to say “To hell with falling down! I am going to walk! If I fall down it’s in no way different from anybody with both his ordinary legs tripping up and falling down.” And don’t forget plenty of people do."






















"The chief requirement of anyone disabled is to be independent of outside assistance. It is an awful bore to feel that you cannot do this or that without asking somebody to help you. Strangely enough it is not the apparently difficult things that provide the major problem. Keeping to the subject of legs, most people think that the difficulty is to walk. Actually that is only the primary difficulty which, having learnt to use the artificial legs, i.e. standing up and walking about a flat open space, represents the initial requirement only. Once you have acquired the method of operating the artificial legs, the walking problem is, to a greater or lesser degree, solved. The normal everyday requirements of life pose more difficult problems to which as usual a simple answer is the best."

"When I took delivery of my first pair of artificial legs, all sorts of new, both irritating and interesting, things cropped up. There was the question of dressing and undressing which sounds stupid but in fact presents quite a problem at first. You cannot fiddle your feet in and out of your trousers, for example, like an ordinary person as they are fixed and remain at right angles to the shin. With someone helping you get into bed, you sit on the bed and take your legs off. Your friend takes them away and leans them up against the wall perhaps out of reach from the bed. Then you find that during the night you want to get up. Either you can get out by using your hands, landing on the floor and then propelling yourself along with the aid of your hands on your backside, or you can shout for someone. After a few mistakes like this you get yourself organised, and the last thing you do before getting into bed is to take your legs off. In other words in the final preparation for bed you sit on the edge, take your legs off, and lean them up against the wall by the bed in case you want them in a hurry. You may decide if you have got to get out in the middle of the night, and it is not too far away, you won’t bother to put your legs on but you will use your hands and your backside to go where you want."

"Different people vary obviously in what they do and I can only say what I have found over the years. You get used to dragging yourself about with your arms and your hands and after a bit you soon realise the possibilities of doing virtually everything except walking without putting your legs on."

"My morning routine is to get up, get on to the floor and go along by the hands and backside method to the bathroom where there is a chair or stool beside the bath. With one hand on the edge of the bath and one on the stool you seat yourself on the latter. With one hand on the stool and one on the edge of the bath you raise yourself and sit on the edge of the bath and then with a hand on each side of the bath you lower yourself into the bath-tub. Having slipped off the edge once and hurt yourself you remember to put a wet face flannel on the nearest side of the bath-tub on which you are going to sit before getting into the bath. This stops you slipping. You only need to forget it once and you will remember for the rest of your life. The same thing applies to getting out. You seat yourself on the face flannel on the edge of the bath and then on the stool. If you have left your legs in the bathroom the night before, they are there for you to put on and walk away from the bathroom in the morning. If you are married you can leave your legs in the bedroom at night and your wife can bring them along to the bathroom in the morning. It is in overcoming the ordinary day to day requirements like the above that a disabled person achieves normality. If you cannot wash yourself and have a bath and do all the essential everyday requirements of life without somebody to help you, you are inevitably restricted and the aim of every disabled person is to be completely independent. If you have achieved that, you have achieved normality. You can travel all over the world, as I do; visit out of the way places and lead a similar life to anyone else without ever being a nuisance to other people or to yourself. Only on the odd occasion when you suffer a mechanical breakage of an artificial leg are you temporarily stopped and even then it is a great deal easier than when an ordinary person breaks his leg! Several times in my travels overseas when I don’t normally carry a spare leg, I have had breaks and it is surprising how you can get them repaired, if not perfectly at least usefully, by the local blacksmith or better still nowadays in the workshops of any reasonably sized aerodrome."

"When I was in hospital convalescing before acquiring artificial legs, I worked out in my own mind how I would need to have my car adjusted so that I could drive it. At that time I had a small 8 h.p. two-seater sports car which fortunately had a driving position which gave plenty of leg room. I did not like the idea of hand controls so my mind concentrated on an adjustment to the normal foot controls. In those days these consisted of three pedals, an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Of these pedals, the accelerator and the brake were operated by the right foot and the clutch alone by the left. My right leg was off above the knee so it was clear (even without knowledge of artificial ones) that my left leg, which was off below the knee, would be the master leg as far as I was concerned. I therefore decided to put the clutch pedal on the right and have the accelerator and brake pedals moved so that they would be operated by my left foot. A garage chum made this alteration and never have I needed to change it. Every car I have owned since has had the pedals transferred in this way. The sole modification that I needed to make was to put a wedge shaped wooden board in front of the clutch pedal so that my right foot stayed in position and when I depressed my leg my foot slid down the wedge on to the pedal. This was necessary because normally the rubber or leather mat which is in front of the pedals of a motor car stopped my heel from sliding. With the modern development of the two pedal car with some sort of automatic transmission which eliminates the clutch pedal, the matter is much more simple. All there is on the floor is an accelerator and a brake pedal and instead of having these pedals up against the right hand side of the car, I have them moved a couple of inches to the left so that I can operate the pedals with my left foot and a normal person can operate them with his right foot."

"Some people prefer hand controls. It is a personal matter. Both are equally effective."

"So much for the motor car."

"Flying an aeroplane presents no difficulty unless it is equipped with foot brakes. Up to the beginning of the war all British aeroplanes were equipped with a rudder control which was either a bar pivoted in the middle (so that pressure by either foot swung the bar) or there were two complete foot pedals which moved up and down. You pushed with your right foot for right rudder and vice versa. Now, if you place your foot on a bar and push you can do that from your thigh and your shin without actually having to depress your foot in relation to your shin. The brakes on aeroplanes in those days were operated from the control column or joystick by means of a lever rather like that on the handle bar of a motorcycle. When you depressed the lever and the rudder bar was central, both brakes went on. You obtained differential braking by moving the rudder bar on whichever side you wanted the brake, i.e. right rudder, right brake."

"Subsequently American aircraft and some British have adopted foot brakes in the shape of pedals on the rudder bar. It is therefore necessary to depress the pedal by extending your foot, i.e. by using your toes. This is not possible for a man with two artificial feet because that is the one movement which is lacking."

"The question of playing games often crops up with disabled people. Now a man without legs can in fact run provided he has two knees. If on the other hand one leg is off above the knee this is not possible. The nearest one can produce is a sort of ungainly lurch."

"Having played all forms of ball games before I lost my legs, I naturally tried to do so afterwards. Cricket I found playable from the batting point of view but impossible for fielding, the difficulty here being that you could not bend down quickly enough to be of any use, nor could you move rapidly to take a ball that was just outside your reach, so I gave it up. Tennis I found and still find perfectly playable in doubles. If you know a game, you don’t need to move so quickly because you can anticipate, and with an active partner I find playing doubles at tennis congenial and quite effective."

"The third game I played until recently was squash rackets. This again was a game I knew very well before I lost my legs, and it is of course played in a confined space which helps. There is no question of playing competitively. The best thing to do is to play with someone who is good, who will not hit everything out of your reach but will adjust his game to give you plenty to do and himself plenty of exercise. He will not, for instance, play drop shots when you are at the back of the court. I played this game regularly until the age of 37 and stopped playing because of the non-availability of squash courts and because it was mechanically rough on the legs."

"Apart from occasional games of tennis in the summer with my friends, my chief game now is golf, which I play to a handicap of six. Golf, undoubtedly, is the game that a physically handicapped person can play on equal terms with others. The great thing about golf is that you can play it anywhere. Whether you have one arm or no legs or whatever it is, the handicapping system is such that you can always have a good game and a lot of fun. I would say that it is probably the game that is played most by disabled people in preference to any other. I have met some splendid one-armed players and ones with legs missing. When I first started this game I used to swing the club very fast and fell over every time, but after a bit I discovered that swinging slowly and gripping the club lightly enabled me to keep my arms clear of my body and therefore avoid upsetting my balance. I still over-balance occasionally but so does everybody else. Only on rare occasions does one get a stance, for instance, in my case in the left hand corner of a bunker, which is more difficult for a disabled my than the ordinary chap, the reason being that you cannot take weight on your above-knee leg when it is bent."

"As life goes on with the disability there are certain things which automatically solve themselves. In the initial stages one is very sensitive to other people offering help. Having got used to a disability and your friends knowing that you have got it, one not only accepts help but asks for it when needed. This is much the best way of carrying on and saves embarrassment for everybody. For instance, if I am walking up a slope on a golf course I get someone to give me a pull because it helps. If I am walking down I hang on to someone to stop myself running away. In the early days I would never do this, determined to be unnecessarily independent."

"Any heavy weight like a suitcase, your friend will carry for you – it is easier. You are carrying yourself on your legs so there is no point in adding weight to them and making it more difficult."

"As regards shoes, the lightest shoes you can get are the best for the same reason. You do not want to add any more weight. A lot of nonsense used to be talked years ago about an artificial leg needing to weigh a certain amount, so as not to get blown about in the wind. This is not true. An artificial leg ideally should weigh nothing because everything artificial is dead weight. The most tiring thing you can do with artificial legs is to stand. Therefore, the obvious thing to do is to sit whenever you can. You can do this unobtrusively by sitting on the edge of a chair arm or a table thereby taking the weight off your feet or, if you are with friends, simply sitting down. They understand."

"The little things are the awkward ones like getting out of a chair in a confined space. I once had a letter from a man asking me how to get out of a chair without arms on the sides. This had never been one of my problems. Automatically you raise yourself from an armchair by placing your hands on the arms and pushing. Likewise if there are no arms to the chair you merely push from the seat. The principle is the same, namely that you have got to get your weight moving forwards before you can stand up. Where you tend to be clumsy is in moving around a confined space like a drawing room with furniture when you are trying to hand a plate of sandwiches or a cup of tea to someone else. Therefore you must avoid doing it. Your hostess would infinitely prefer you to sit still in the knowledge that you are clumsy under such conditions than to knock over a table and break her crockery."

"The goal of a disabled person surely is to get back to normal as far as is reasonably possible. Clearly there are some things which you did before you were disabled which are physically impossible to do minus your leg. Therefore you do not try and do them. On the other hand there are plenty of other things which you can continue to do. If you are athletically inclined you cannot play football, but you can play golf. If you are not athletically inclined and were never a person to play games, there is no reason to suggest that you should start playing them merely because someone else with the same disability does so. Everyone’s idea of a normal life is different and what you wish to achieve is your idea of a normal life. Whatever it is, one thing above all is essential and that is to decide not to be a burden on your friends and relations. Remember that they know of your disability and will help you physically whenever you may want such help."


“To my way of thinking, a disabled man who has achieved independence is no longer disabled.”