For my empathy assignment I simulated tight quadriceps by taping a yardstick to the side of my leg and a cardboard tube behind my knee. I started feeling how difficult it would be even while taping the objects to my leg, especially taping around my ankle, and climbing up and down the stairs to retrieve my phone and other items. It was difficult to climb stairs, put on a skirt, and bend down to pick up a dropped object like I did in the video. Whenever I would start to get impatient and try to go faster, I would start to lose control or mess up what I was trying to do.
This has given me a better view of what it is like to have some kind of disability affecting your leg. Many of the different things you do in life involve using your legs, and everything from sitting to bending over becomes difficult, uncomfortable, and sometimes even painful when you can't bend your knee. I am sure that living my whole life like this would be very difficult. I hope that through biotech we can develop better ways to help those who suffer from conditions like cerebral palsy to function more easily and comfortably.
Using video to do this assignment was a little bit challenging, but it was very helpful to gain a better understanding of the difficulties disabilities can cause. I could not only feel the difference between walking with my regular leg and walking without being able to bend my knee, but I could see it, too. In some ways a video might make an activity look easier or harder than it actually was, but for the most part it helped me to visualize how difficult the actions I had to perform were and how differently I had to go about them. The combination of video and experience helped me to gain a better knowledge and more empathy for those who suffer from cerebral palsy and similar conditions.
-Katie
