@longtompot: I have very bad RA. I now use a biologics, but before that I was extremely unsteady on my feet and was due to have a double knee replacement.
I had attended the same church for a decade and used to sit away from people because my whole body hurt, especially if bumped. A couple of people I knew used to unobtrusively get me a chair, etc.
I used a walking stick and always left early to avoid the crowds. One day I had just stood up, and, out of nowhere, a woman grabbed me. She was leaving at the same time, and when her son turned around to query her delay, she loudly announced "I'm just helping this lady."
I was furious for so many reasons. I didn't know this woman to speak to. I had just gone through a bereavement and had lost the only person who I really wanted to help me physically, and he always asked before doing so. Also, I have always had a great need for personal body space and can't bear being touched by random people. And overall, it made me feel like a figure to be pitied. She didn't see me as an individual, just as a thing to be patronised. I know I probably built it up to be more than it was, but I wanted to punch that woman, largely because of what she represented.
It brought home to me how much my life sucked. Everything seemed to have fallen apart. I was no longer a person, but a "charity case." You are reduced to just an illness, or in your daughter's case, a wheelchair user, not an intelligent individual with unique emotions.
With medicine and new knees. my health has improved, but I still can't bear to go back to that church because of it signifies everything that was horrible in my life at that time. I know I'm probably being a drama queen, but so be it.