and a good few years of intense physio until I was able to hobble about on elbow crutches. This didn't sound very enticing to me. Not unlike when I was 7, I had other plans for the next few years. I was pretty keen to finish high school, move away to university and start having all manner of grown-up adventures. Adventures I was perfectly happy to have while seated. I probably could have put in the hard yards and eventually have been able to walk a little bit, but I wouldn't have gotten a whole lot else done. I've been a wheelchair user my entire life, and I don't regret a second of it. Despite what the media would have us believe, with the reporting of cases like Rob Summers, most disabled people are not waiting for a cure. We're waiting for other stuff, like access and equality, support and respect, but a cure? No. Something else I read in the Bloomberg article jumped out at me, a quote from Mr Summers: "You don't see a lot of paralysed people in the world because you are ashamed or embarrassed. I know I was. And this has given me back my confidence." Perhaps this is what is most upsetting about this story; that we as a society have taught Rob Summers that his worth as a human being is measured by his capacity to walk, and not by the place he takes in a richly diverse world. That's something that has