To scoot or not to scoot? Is is better to drag your legs around for as long as you can or to give in and get yourself a set of electric wheels?
That decision prompted this vent on a multiple sclerosis Facebook group recently:
“I’m just wondering if anyone has this happen to them. Every time I go to the store I have someone roll up on me in their electric scooter and tell me I need to get one. Every time my response is the same “I refuse to use one until I absolutely have no other choice” and then they shake their head at me like I’m crazy. Granted I know how I look pushing my walker (which I refused to use for a long time and just clutched onto walls) and dragging my dead weight of a right leg behind me, red faced and sweating with the effort, but for now I am able to walk so I do, is that really such a bad thing?”
For many years I felt the same way as that writer. It took one tripping fall too many, however, to convince me to find some walking help. I began using a cane; first a fold-up, used only occasionally, then a nice looking wooden cane that I used all the time. That was in the late 1990s, close to twenty years after first being diagnosed with MS.
I started using a scooter in the summer of 2000, when a colleague suggested that I rent one to get around the large Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Philadelphia’s First Union Center (now the Wells Fargo Center), while covering the political conventions being held in those cities. Riding, rather than walking, gave me the mobility that I needed to do my job. I scooted whenever I was at those venues and at the the end of each long working day I parked, plugged the scooter into its charger and walked out of the convention center. Without using the scooter someone probably would have had to have carried me out.
Four years later, my wife convinced me to buy a scooter of my own. My Pride Sonic (now called a “Go-Go”) separated into 4 parts. The heaviest was about 
40 pounds so I could disassemble the scooter, throw it into the back of my SUV and take it to work with me. That gave me two benefits, I could move around our news bureau, which covered 3 large floors, faster than anyone else and I also saved a ton of personal energy.
That Sonic also came along on cruises to Alaska and the Mediterranean with my wife and I but, eventually, it became too heavy and cumbersome to travel with. So, enter the TravelScoot. This is a 35 pound scooter that can be folded
like a baby stroller. I can ride it right to an aircraft door where it’s stowed, folded in a coat closet or unfolded in the cargo bay, and it’s returned to me at the door when we arrive. I still use a larger scooter, now a Go-Go, around town and to walk our dog. (And when we go grocery shopping, my wife rides the Go-Go and I ride the TravelScoot). But the TravelScoot is, as the name suggests, primarily my travel scooter. It’s wheeled me around the ruins of Ephesus, Turkey and been “tendered” from a cruise ship onto the shore at Santorini, Greece.
I’m not advocating for a particular brand of scooter. An on-line search will turn up dozens, at prices ranging from around $900 to $4,500 or so. And you’ll probably have to pay for it yourself. Unless your doctor will certify that you need an electric scooter to get around in your house it’s unlikely that Medicare, Medicaid or your insurance will pay for it in the U.S.
I am, however, advocating that you not allow pride, vanity or a strict “use it or lose it” philosophy to stand in the way of getting yourself some wheels. It really helped to make me more independent and it made a big difference in the qualify of my life.
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(This post first appeared as my column on www.multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com)
