I recently found myself temporarily in a wheelchair after an operation, and “wheeling in someone else’s shoes.” I discovered a whole different viewpoint from the level of a wheelchair.

A two-inch lip on a doorway that was previously stepped over now became an obstacle on my way to the doctor’s office. I have to open large, heavy doors while my husband pushes me at another’s doctor’s office; it would be impossible for me alone. Grocery stores are the easiest to enter, but the cardboard product displays are an obstacle course in the aisles and the workers at the deli can hardly see me. I will say that if you ask for someone to help, they are glad to go with you.

Heaven help you if you have to heed nature’s call. The newer stores do have large handicap stalls, though the doors do not open automatically. Some of the older stores, rather than making changes to the powder rooms, have signs telling you to call an associate or manager to help you. What is a stranger who is not a health care worker going to do? How embarrassing and degrading.

Even some of our own Maine state rest areas have not heeded the law. Last summer at a rest stop I saw a lady who had opened the farthest stall door, jammed her chair as close to the toilet as she could and did what she had to in full view of anyone who might have walked by.

Then there is the populace themselves, parking or leaving shopping carts in the diagonally lined area between handicapped spaces to I can’t get my door open enough to transfer from car to chair. I have seen old people with canes put their carts away, what’s the matter with the young, healthy ones?

I am blessed; I will be out of my wheelchair in January, but I will see with new eyes the problems of the physically challenged. I will ask myself, “Why do I not see any people in wheelchairs in this store? Is it because this store is inhospitable to customers in wheelchairs, so they stay home?”

Sally Lyman is a resident of Orland.