Hol­lis Ja­cob was di­ag­nosed with spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy (ge­net­ic dis­or­der in which a per­son can­not con­trol the move­ment of their mus­cles due to a loss of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain stem) at the age of three.

The 45-year-old has spent most of his life con­fined to a wheel­chair.

He said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has left him feel­ing a range of emo­tions from fear, em­pow­er­ment and even grat­i­tude.

But what stood out to him the most is that he be­lieves the pan­dem­ic has left peo­ple with a greater un­der­stand­ing of how ill­ness af­fects peo­ple's lives.

Chief among them for him are the re­stric­tions.

“As a dif­fer­ent­ly-abled per­son, there are a lot of places I can’t go and things I can’t do be­cause a lot of places do not have wheel­chair ramps or el­e­va­tors. So I spend a lot of time at home. Now that a num­ber of places have to be closed and every­one has to stay home it lev­els the play­ing field.”

Ja­cob said every­day things like go­ing to the mall, that a phys­i­cal­ly abled per­son may take for grant­ed, is of­ten not even an op­tion for him.

Ja­cob who moves around on a mo­tor­ized wheel­chair is well known in his Ply­mouth com­mu­ni­ty as he can of­ten be seen whizzing by, greet­ing neigh­bours and chil­dren on his route. He said he has since had to re­con­sid­er his al­ready lim­it­ed runs.

“As much as I ob­serve safe­ty pro­to­cols and wear my mask I could re­call one oc­ca­sion where I was just out get­ting some fresh air and my chair rolled over a rock and it af­fect­ed that head­rest. I can’t ad­just it my­self but strangers near­by saw me in dis­tress and they helped.”

He said be­cause of the preva­lence of COVID peo­ple may be un­der­stand­ably hes­i­tant to as­sist.

And while Ja­cob is not heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the health­care sys­tem for med­ical ser­vices, he not­ed there are oth­er dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple whose lives have dras­ti­cal­ly changed in one way or an­oth­er.

But the pan­dem­ic has al­so brought some ben­e­fits as Ja­cob who is high­ly ref­er­enced as be­ing knowl­edge­able about sev­er­al ar­eas of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy has al­so start­ed a vir­tu­al helpdesk for stu­dents and per­sons who need IT as­sis­tance.

He has al­so been able to ac­cess oth­er ser­vices be­cause the world is now on­line.

“For years I've been want­i­ng to do some IT cours­es but I couldn’t be­cause they were in­ac­ces­si­ble but now al­most every­thing is on­line and oth­ers are be­ing de­vel­oped for on­line plat­forms so I can up­grade my skills and train­ing.”

Ja­cob said through it all he has learnt that life is un­cer­tain as "in the blink of an eye things can change."

He said he is hap­py that he was able to find some good and help oth­ers in the cri­sis. He said he be­lieves that if every­one works to­geth­er with time the new nor­mal will work.