Her entire life changed as she knew it in 2018.
In 2026, DeLena Perry now wears a crown and sash, as the Clark County resident was recently crowned Miss Wheelchair Washington 2026.
On Perry’s eight-year survivor anniversary of the worst symptoms possible with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which took over her body in 2018, she was crowned Miss Wheelchair Washington on Saturday, Jan. 24.
Perry will be using her new platform to further her advocacy work in bettering the lives of disabled individuals in the state of Washington and the entire country.
As Miss Wheelchair Washington, Perry will also be partaking in the Miss Wheelchair America pageant in Michigan in August. Perry has had a life full of fun while being disabled, with travel, community group engagement and more.
Since being crowned Miss Wheelchair Washington, she has been offered new adventure opportunities, from a hot air balloon ride to skydiving.
Perry also added that she is open to further engagement opportunities, from school appearances, to employment training for representation of somebody with a disability, to throwing out the opening pitch and other public appearances. Perry’s adventures can be followed on social media at Ms. Wheelchair Washington-America on Facebook as well as on Instagram: @mswheelchairwa.
Perry also serves as the secretary of the Clark County Accessible Community Advisory Committee, a council-appointed committee that advises policy makers on the needs of people with disabilities in both general and emergency planning.
The journey to a crown and sash
In 2018, Perry received a flu vaccine and experienced some numbness in her arm. Within a 24-hour period, Perry went from a healthy, normal life, to fighting for her life on a ventilator, paralyzed from head to toe. Perry suffered the most severe reaction to Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), which is a rare autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks the peripheral nerves.
“It is really similar to MS but backwards,” Perry said. “Like, MS is progressive and it’s a demyelination of the peripheral nervous system. Mine was overnight from my head to my toes within a 24-hour period on life support, ventilated, on a feeding tube.”
While having a normal day at work, Perry felt numbness crawl up her body, and it became difficult for her to stand.
“And so I called the advice nurse and they said, ‘You should come in right away,’ but I was like, ‘I have to finish my shift and I have to bring my kid to the doctor,’” Perry recalled. “And so I made an appointment for later that day, but by the time I’d got to the doctor’s appointment at 4 o’clock, they wanted to send me via ambulance to the hospital. By the time I got to the hospital, I could no longer stand. That night I was fully ventilated. So, it was just that fast.”
Perry’s long road to recovery is a story of resilience, now crowned with some sparkle and a whole new journey advocating for others who experience the difficulties of life disabled.
“It took years to get to where I am at now, and I’ve had to learn a whole other level of patience in my life,” she said. “But it’s taught me so many different perspectives about the value of life and the relationships that we form with others, and how you accept things in life that you have no power to control. And so, in the beginning, it was so much about my physical abilities and how I can get a baseline. And then that kind of turned into like a big part of my mental health and, how do I live a life of dependency in a body that I can’t operate?”
In a month, Perry will be receiving her degree in counseling and mental health, adding that the process of going back to school has helped her learn a lot.
“This is the life I have,” she said. “And I can either be resentful and wait, or I can embrace it and live. And so I have chosen to do that. And I’ve also never been shy. I’ve always been a very outgoing person and in this process I’ve really had a lot of exposure to this particular minority group of individuals that have a lot of injustice and no representation. And so it’s helped me to be empowered to fight for things that are fair, just and right.”
Prior to being crowned Miss Wheelchair Washington, Perry had already begun her advocacy journey by writing legislation and being a voice.
“It can be exhausting for someone with a disability,” she said. “Especially those that are dealing with chronic pain, or just to leave the house, and then you leave and you can’t get in an entryway, or you can’t use the restroom. Or, you feel like you don’t belong there. And so there’s just these obstacles upon obstacles that we as a society could do so much better on.”
Perry’s disability provides unique insight that has helped her in her journey advocating for people with disabilities.
“Because I knew the difference from before disability versus after disability, I could see it so plain as day,” she said of the obstacles disabled people face. “Where some people have been with this treatment their whole life, and they think that’s just how life is, and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Early on her advocacy journey, Perry focused on her own mental health issues once she was out of the hospital. She felt there had to be a bigger purpose to what she was going through.
“Why did DeLena get paralyzed?” she said.
Perry explored her thoughts and feelings on life and how there are always a million reasons not to live life to the fullest. From financial concerns, to relationship status, to not being satisfied with the way you look, Perry said that when those issues take away life that could have been lived to the fullest, the realization of just getting out there and doing it is the key.
For Perry, transitioning from preaching the word to doing it herself had its ups and downs, until the joy of life outweighed the embarrassment of certain moments.
“I remember the first time going on an airplane and feeling like everybody was watching me,” she said. “They’re delivering my wheelchair on a truck and 250 people are anxiously awaiting, and I’m holding them up for 20 minutes and they’re all gawking at me while someone’s physically lifting me up out of a chair to transfer into another chair and I’m just like, ‘God, this sucks.’ I could see where someone would say, ‘I don’t want to travel. It’s too much to travel.’ But then I would ask myself, do I hate this embarrassing moment more or do I love traveling more? And the answer is always going to be adventure and traveling. So I learned to get out of my own way, by like, just doing it. Stop talking about it and then showing other people that it can be done.”
The advocacy
“Disabled people are the highest unemployed population of any minority group, but there is a large reason why,” Perry said. “Some of it is government red tape that prohibits us to live above the poverty level. And when I am a working adult, I can’t get care services that help me to get dressed or help me to take a shower every day. I can’t have a financial gain without a financial penalty.”
In order to receive necessary daily services through Medicaid, Perry has to live below the $2,500 per month poverty line in Washington state.
“So let’s say I earn $5,000 per month. I can still only profit $2,500,” she said, hypothetically. “$2,500 of that would go toward my care services, which now I am no longer covered. I don’t qualify for food stamps. I lose medical eligibility. I no longer can get help with housing. In order for me to earn enough money, I would have to make upwards of $20,000 per month to live at the rate that I’m living now and receive the services that I’m receiving now, which is pretty messed up.”
Perry’s solution, which she has already been strongly advocating for, is that there needs to be more affordable long term care services. Perry believes the state of Washington is off on the right foot with the Washington CARES legislation, which acts like a Social Security fund toward obtaining needed services.
Perry said her disability qualifies her for Medicare, but that doesn’t cover long term care services. Medicaid does, however, but in order to qualify for that: “You’ve got to be poor,” Perry expressed.
“I’m held under the standard of remaining poor, but I have so much to give back to the community,” she added. “I’m happy to pay tax dollars. I’m happy to feel purposeful in this world, and those stipulations are what stops most of us from being able to rejoin the workforce.”
Perry said she will advocate legislation, to governors, to anyone who will listen.
“We could do something a little differently,” she said. “We either build our Washington CARES — it’s a great base plan — or we have Medicare federally fund our long term care services because what qualifies us is our disability, not our income. It shouldn’t be our income that qualifies us. It should be our disability. And can I also contribute to the world and be a taxpayer? Dollar per dollar, it makes more sense to let the disabled people work and receive necessary care. But I just have to get that message to the right person.”
Revisiting a place of refuge: Lewisville Park
On Thursday, Feb. 12, with her service dog, her “right hand man,” Nico, enjoying the smells and sights of Lewisville Park, Perry was also enjoying the park as it has been an incredibly important place in her life.
“It is a really, really special place to my heart and for multiple reasons,” she said of Lewisville Park, just north of Battle Ground. “When I was in my long term recovery, I spent six months in the hospital, and nearly half of that amount of time I was on a ventilator that breathed moist, humid air into my lungs, and I smelt that nasty smell of what hospitals smell like, and I just remember laying there and asking myself if I would ever smell the freshness of the water or the pine trees, and Lewisville became that for me out of recovery.”
Perry has a large arm tattoo with her favorite views from parks and all of her favorite places that she calls her “healing place.” Before she could even begin to be able to get out of a vehicle on her own, Perry and her family drove out to Lewisville Park and rolled the windows down so she could smell the air, she said.
“I’ve come here a lot, put my feet in this water, and just had a time out from life,” Perry said. “And it’s just kind of a place to reset, breathe and smell the beauty that’s around us.”
The park is also a place where family memories are everywhere for Perry. Every year, she had family photos done at Lewisville Park. Perry has kept the tradition going with family photos of herself and her two sons, Kaden and Kyren.
Many would remember the name Kaden Perry as the Battle Ground High School basketball legend who went to the next level to play for the Gonzaga University Bulldogs. But for his mother, he was as much of an inspiration to her as she was to him.
“I used to say when my body was stuck in a chair, I could watch his fly,” she said of watching Kaden’s basketball games. “I’m, like, hands down always thinking if it had to happen to one of us in our family, I was glad it was me. I wanted my boy to soar. I would say, his adventures through basketball, like, they were medicine during hard times. If I had no strength but to watch my boy play basketball, it meant the world to me.”
