It’s no secret that one of the keys to staying healthy and functional is to walk as much as possible. But what happens when you get injured and still need to walk, and more importantly, still need to work in a place like Honolulu?

For months after my initial Covid-19 infection, I suffered from severe inflammation, as well as bone and joint damage as a side effect that made it difficult for me to walk. I learned a thing or two about accessibility around Oahu in the process.

If there is one thing I’ve always loved to do, it’s walk. During the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, before I got sick, I used the stay-at-home orders as an opportunity to participate in “virtual races” as a means to pass the time and stay healthy. Those are online marathons where one can win medals for walking, running or other physical activities logged on one’s smartwatch.

Walking is Life: Before and After Covid

On average, I would walk five miles or more a day during the early months of the stay-at-home orders, and I lost about 30 pounds over the course of the emergency orders without any changes in dietary habits (read the research on similar individuals and try it yourself; you’ll love it).

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and like all or most of you, I had to come back to the physical office at the end of the emergency orders. That meant back to the grind of getting up early, spending hours on H1 to commute to work, sitting in front of a computer screen all day, and all the other things that constitute “the old normal” work experience.

Then something happened that I did not expect. In September, just when I thought I had escaped the entire pandemic with boasting rights to the no-Covid club, I caught “the rona” at a conference full of people who, because of their job, were all certified to be fully vaccinated. Talk about bad luck!

Now most people think of Covid as a respiratory disease, but what they don’t realize is that our immune systems can overreact in fighting the coronavirus, resulting in severe, organ-damaging inflammation in other parts of the body. In my case, I ended up with crippling pain and swelling all over my body that made it difficult to walk, sit upright and even stand.

Between the months of October to December, I spent most of my days on sick leave, at home, sometimes spending whole weeks lying in bed, barely able to do anything and taking multiple medications for pain management. MRIs showed that I had edema of the soft tissues and damage to bones in my ankles and feet. 

Most days I had to wipe myself down with Huggies baby wipes to stay clean, and I had to use a portable toilet by my bedside for weeks to relieve myself. For those of you who have never been in this kind of predicament, being in bed for days is not “rest” – not being able to walk for protracted periods of time will quickly catch up with you. 

I knew I had to start walking again, but I didn’t know if it was possible. Walking is life. Research shows that after six weeks of inactivity due to an injury, muscles can decondition at a rate of 0.5% per day, followed by a loss of as much as 400 grams of muscle tissue, which has serious implications for your overall health.

Your pelvic floor muscles, and, in the case of men, your prostate, are also negatively impacted by not walking, and if you don’t walk for a month or more, you’ll definitely feel the worst you’ve ever felt in your life.

I made the decision to start walking again, little by little, no matter how much it hurt. First, by practicing standing for prolonged periods by my bed, then practicing walking to the bathroom and back, 10 feet away. Later, I started coming back to work – parking as close as possible to the office, and using the elevators – and then walking as much as possible wherever I could go.

And what did I discover? Honolulu sucks if you’re injured or disabled and on foot.

Crosswalks

The timing of walk lights on our crosswalks seems to be configured for healthy people who have quick strides. The wider the street – say for example, Beretania by the State Capitol – the faster you have to walk.

Making things even more stressful is the fact that cars make right turns while pedestrians are trying to cross. I feel like injured, disabled and elderly people need more time to cross or the benefit of a no right turn on red light. Something as simple as crossing the street with post-Covid condition can be dangerous and agonizing.

Sidewalks

We really need to talk about this. I get it that space is at a premium on Oahu, but that is no excuse for narrow sidewalks. They’re dangerous to navigate if you’re walking with a limp past other pedestrians, some of whom are walking multiple pets and won’t (or can’t) move out of the way. Combine that with broken or uneven sidewalks, or sidewalks littered with trash or rotting leaves, and getting around town on foot becomes a chore.

Public Parking Lots

I hate to break it to the elitists, but injured people do need to use cars occasionally. And you know what can really ruin your day? Parking lots with tiny gaps between cars where you can barely open your door. Try stepping out of your car and squeezing between the tight gap of two cars in a parking lot if both your ankles are injured and you have poor stability. 

I know some of you secretly like this problem because it serves as a “deterrence inconvenience” to make less people visit places by car, but it’s elitism to throttle access to public locations by constructing things in a way that can cause agony for injured, disabled or elderly people.

Humbled But Determined

Thankfully I’m much better now and I can walk and exercise almost as well as I did pre-Covid, but my experience during my physical weakness causes me to realize yet again that Honolulu has a lot of catching up to do in terms of infrastructure.

When you’re strong, you think you’re invincible and you don’t see anything wrong with the world around you. But when you’re injured, when you’re humbled, when you’re at your weakest, you begin to see things that you might have missed before.

We need to work on accessibility and safety for people in Honolulu, especially those who need safe walking infrastructure. 

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by the Atherton Family Foundation, Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation and Papa Ola Lokahi.