Advice on Camping When You're Disabled

My wife has rheumatoid arthritis and, according to Social Security, is disabled. I have ulcerative colitis and consider myself disabled when it comes to camping because of the problems that occur when it comes to flares and other physical discomforts.

When you are disabled and love to camp, there are actually some positives that go along with the negatives.

When given a choice, these days, we prefer an RV to a "fold-down" camper or a tent; however, until we both got worse, the more rudimentary styles were our preference.

When we camp, there are two factors that my wife and I find comforting. When we camp with an RV, there is a built-in community. There is plenty of company and as we get to know our neighbors, it is not embarrassing to share our need for possible assistance. Often other people are in the same boat. Also, camping gets us away from the stress of life and that is usually an aid to most medical problems; it is certainly an aid to ours.

In this age of cell phones it is really pretty hard to be without assistance. When my wife and I leave on a camping trip, we always make sure that we are aware of a nearby major hospital and that we have plenty of our medications with us. Further, we don't like to leave town at the same time that our doctors are on vacation.

The joy of camping is diminished when one is disabled. Some of the things that are fun to do - such as hiking, bird watching, long-term fishing and cooking fish - are much harder to do. It is either necessary to curtail these activities or cut them out all together.

My wife and I used to enjoy doing a lot of outdoor cooking. Now it is much harder to manually wash the dishes so, as I indicated, it is easier to cook in an RV.

If you have been a camper a large part of your life as we have, it is not near as much fun to camp using an RV as the other methods. The heavy work of loading, unloading and setting up sleeping quarters is almost impossible.

Occasionally, when my wife and I are feeling particularly chipper, we may pack a very small tent and sleep in sleeping bags; however, that is pretty hard on my wife's rheumatoid arthritis.