Where the heck have you been - and why can't you walk anymore??
Been out of touch far too long - I tried to hit on the highlights, but a lot has changed.
April 2006:
All aboard for Disney World. I love Disney World - I could go there for vacation every year and still find things to do and see and enjoy. Getting around was a little tricky - broken foot, crutches, etc. But we rented a scooter and I managed pretty well. We had a lot of fun. I love just hanging out with my kids. They’ve turned out to be such great people - intelligent and kind and funny. Even if they weren’t my kids I would still like to hang out with them.
May 2006 - June 2006:
Foot making excellent progress. Starting to exercise again, getting out of the house & re-immersing myself in life. Feels good to be “me” again. Sean leaves for the Annapolis - the house seems empty and quiet. I worry about him constantly. During Plebe Summer they are only allowed a few phone calls home - for very short periods, and no emails. When I speak to him he says he is fine but he seems much more serious.
July 2006 - September 2006: Work suddenly gets crazy. Rumors of a merger and/or takeover by another company are flying around. Lots and lots of overtime. Amanda is working full-time and not around very much. In August we go to Parents weekend in Anapolis. Sean looks great and after a few hours of teasing by Amanda is back to his old self. Leaving after that weekend is harder than it was to leave the first time.
September 2006 - December 2006: Amanda finishes up her last few high school classes and prepares for a school sponsored trip to China in the Spring. She is learning Mandarin and doing amazingly well. Despite the fact that she has sufficient credits to graduate in January, she decides to stay in school until April so she can take advantage of the China trip and a paid internship at Fashion Institute of Technology. She applies to several colleges but has her heart set on Manhattanville College as it is far enough away to live on campus but close enough to home to come home whenever she wants (1.5 hours by trains).
January 2007: Amanda finds that she has not been accepted into Manhattanville. She is crushed. She did however get into several other colleges, including U-Mass, which she ultimately decides to attend. I try to reconcile myself to the fact that both of my “babies” are going to be living 4+ hours away from me.
February 2007: Amanda breaks up with her boyfriend of three years. I am just as sad as she is - although I know she’s too young to settle down with someone, Billy has become one of the family and I will miss having him around all the time. I also worry about who she will date now - so far I’ve been lucky and she’s skipped the “bad boy” stage.
March 2007: Amanda travels up to Boston to visit friends and meets someone new (friend of a friend). They immediately start spending all their time online or on the phone together. Within the month she is “in love”. I have major issues with this guy - as he is ten years older than her (28 to her 18). Several ugly fights ensue. This is the first time my daughter and I have really fought - we’ve always been very close. The whole thing is very stressful. Meantime, takeover of my company has been confirmed. An Australian company will be taking over within a few months. Despite assurances that I will have a job when everything is settled, I still worry.
April 2007: I am sick all month. Always feeling tired and run down I go through a bad head cold, major sinus infection, very bad tooth infection, and stomach cramps one right after the other. I go to work and come home and go to bed. My head hurts, my throat hurts, my arms hurt, my legs hurt. Bad, bad month. I put it all down to stress from job uncertainty and arguing with Amanda.
May 2007: I am at work the first week of May and walking down the hallway from the copier back to my desk. Without any warning, my left leg just seems to go numb and gives out on me. I fall in the hallway. Embarrassed, I accept help getting up, brush myself off and go back to my desk. Not sure what happened, I tentatively walk around my desk and everything seems to be okay except for the pain in my knees, which is where I landed. I go home and figure that since it’s Friday, I have time to rest and relax and I’ll feel better by Monday. I take the subway home. By the time I get off the subway my legs are both feeling weak and I have shooting pains in my left leg. I assume it’s because of the fall. I go home and go to bed. Saturday I get up in the morning and find that I cannot support my own weight. My husband fishes out my old cane from my broken foot days and I hobble around the house. I decide that if I don’t feel better by Monday I will call in sick and go see the doctor. By Sunday I am considerably worse. I fall on the way to the bathroom. My husband decides to take me to the Emergency Room.
I wind up spending a week in the hospital and go through every test imaginable - Cat Scans, MRIs, and X-rays of my legs, back, and head; Blood Tests; Neurological Tests; a Spinal Tap. Finally I am told that it appears I have had a virus in my system - probably for at least a couple of months (which they base on the fact that I had felt sick and tired for so long). The virus has caused nerve and possibly muscle damage. I am given a blood transfusion and advised to go to a Rehab Center to build up the muscles in my legs again. Instead, feeling better after a week in the hospital, I go home. I spend a week at home resting and decide I can go back to work.
All goes well for two days. On the third day I am walking down the stairs of the subway on my way home and my left leg collapses again. I sit on the stairs for almost an hour before I get the strength to stand up and get on a train to go home. When it’s time to get off I am clinging to the poles and doors because my legs feel that they are going to give out on me at any moment. I get to the exit stairs and call my husband to come and meet me & I sit there and wait for him. For the next several days I spend my time visiting with and talking to various specialists - none of which have a definitive answer for me. My official diagnosis becomes Idiopathic Peripheral Neuropathy, which basically seems to mean I have leg weakness and pain that cause me to be unable to walk and no one seems to know exactly why.
June 2007: Things get progressively worse. I go from being able to hobble around with my cane with intermittent periods of weakness where I have to sit to being unable to walk the vast majority of the time with intermittent periods of ability to walk. I use a wheelchair to get the few feet from my bedroom to the bathroom. I fall getting out of the chair one night and after that I start experiencing panic attacks when I attempt to leave my bed. My internist prescribes Zoloft for the panic attacks which pushes them back enough so that I can force myself to get from the bed to my chair and from my chair to the toilet. Getting into the tub to take a shower becomes an impossible dream so I take sponge baths in my chair.
July 2007: More doctors visits, more tests, more questions, no answers. I rarely leave my room except for doctors’ appointments. My daughter brings me lunch every day and my husband brings me dinner. I watch a ridiculous amount of television and sleep more than I ever could have thought possible. I am depressed, lonely, scared, and angry. Amanda is scheduled to leave for Massachusetts at the end of the month but is talking about staying to take care of me. I pull myself together enough to assure her that I will be fine & start wheeling myself out to the kitchen to show her that I can do some things for myself. I don’t want her to feel guilty about leaving me.
August 2007 - September 2007: Finances, which had been tight all summer (disability insurance pays a ridiculously small amount of money every month) are starting to look dire. Bills are overdue. I decide that I will have to figure out some way to return to work. I start to accept that I may never walk “right” again and will have to learn to cope. Basically, I pull my head out of my ass and stop waiting to get better. Life is going to go on - whether I am “better” or not, so I had better figure out how to cope. I make my husband take me to a physical therapist four times a week. After two weeks, I am able to walk very brief periods of time using two canes or a walker. I apply to my insurance company for approval of a Power Wheelchair. I start to research my transportation options - traveling into NYC with a wheelchair is just not feasible on the subway. I consider the Express Bus but after getting feedback from an online support group, I apply for “Access-a-Ride” which is a service that NYC offers for door to door service for the disabled. The cost is the same as a subway or bus ride but it brings you door to door. Now I just have to get approved. This will involve a trip to their processing center and that prospect seems a little daunting to me.
My panic attacks have gotten much better - when I am in a controlled environment. In my house I do well. In the therapists office I am good. Going back and forth from the car into the house or the doctors I do okay - a little nervous but as long as I have someone to “run interference” for me, I can manage. Venturing out into the real world is going to be a real test though. But I realize that if I’m going to go back to work, I am going to have to get used to being around crowds of people anyway. Midtown Manhattan is not going to slow down or look out for me. So the processing center will be good practice.
I make the appointment, ask my mom to go with me, and nervously await the big day. The morning of my appointment they send a car service to pick us up (round-trip transport to the center is provided for free). Since the wheelchair I have is old and doesn’t fold up, I am using my two canes to get around. It takes me forever to navigate from the front door to the car. My heart is pounding in my chest. We get to the center and my first challenge comes up - the curb. Sounds silly doesn’t it - but curbs and steps without railings are a nightmare for me. Because I have to balance on one foot/cane while I lift the other. And I can never be absolutely sure that the leg I am balancing on will have enough strength to allow me to put all of my weight on it. After a couple of false starts I finally manage the curb. Deep breath. We go into the center which is not just the processing center for Access a Ride - it is also a public health clinic for Medicaid patients. So there are a billion people running in every direction. My mom helps me find my way to a chair up against the wall and gets us registered. We wait for several hours before being called down to the processing center. To get down there I have a choice of stairs or a ramp. You would think the ramp would be a no-brainer and easy to maneuver but any kind of slope puts pressure on my leg muscles. Hard to explain until you experience it - let’s just say that now that I have this problem I realize just how much of NYC is on a slope - seems like they are everywhere. So we slowly make our way down the ramp. The woman who is in charge of my application asks us to follow her back to her office. It seems like a half-mile walk - and it takes me forever. I have to stop several times to get the feeling back into my legs. The woman watches all of this and when we get to her office, she says “I don’t even have to examine you - I can tell just by watching you take this walk, you need our services.” She approves me for full-service for five years. This means that they have to pick me up at the front door - some people have to walk to pre-designated stops. We then wait for the car service to come and bring us home. When he arrives, the car is parked across the street. Due to traffic restrictions, he is unable to pull the car up directly in front of the building. I have to have the car service driver and a worker from the clinic stop traffic for me as I slowly make my way across the street into the car. It is embarrassing and stressful. I can feel the panic attack starting as I’m making my way across. Fortunately my mom is talking to me the whole time saying “Take your time - don’t worry about them.” and I am able to make it into the car without incident. We get home and I immediately go to sleep for several hours - just being out in the world was so exhausting for me that it takes me several hours to recover.
Each day I spend time doing physical therapy & exercising. I do feel like I am getting stronger. I practice my walking with my canes. Soon I am reasonably confident about navigating around the house and can even walk with some confidence from my front door to the car parked in the driveway.
My insurance company is giving me a very hard time about approving the power wheelchair. They keep asking for more information and more documentation. It is very frustrating. The Access a Ride ID card is taking a long time to be sent to me. Even though I know I am approved, I can’t actually use the service without the ID card. They tell me it will take up to three weeks.
I am scheduled to return to work on August 22nd. This is a Wednesday. This seems like a good day because I will have two full days of work (Wed-Thurs) and one half-day (Fridays are half-days in the summer for my company). Then I will have two days to rest. So I will be able to ease back into working. By the time the 22nd comes, I still do not have my ID card or my wheelchair but I am reluctant to wait any longer. Money is a pressing concern and more importantly, I feel like I have been making some forward progress and don’t want to lose momentum. My husband and I talk and agree that he will get up early, drive me into the city and walk me to the elevator. From there I will just have to walk from the elevator to my desk where I can stay put for most of the day (except for bathroom breaks) and then at the end of the day he will pick me up in front of the building. So, in theory, I will not have to do that much walking. I think I can handle it.
In reality - walking just from the car into the building and onto the elevator is ridiculously hard for me. I am terrified of all of the people running around me and past me, not looking where they are going (you have no idea how many people walk around looking at their Blackberries or reading the fucking paper instead of looking where they are going). I cannot dodge people, I just have to keep plodding along and hope for the best. There are ten steps leading from the front door to the lobby where the elevator is. My alternative to the stairs is to walk through a passageway that leads to Grand Central and the side of my building - where there is an elevator lift. The lift is operated by security guards so you have to walk through this passageway of people rushing to get to/from their trains and wait by the lift for the guards to make their way over to the lift. From there I walk to the bank of elevators. If there happens to be no one else waiting for an elevator, I push the button and pray the closest elevator shows up because if it is the far one, there is no chance I will be able to walk down and make it in in the time the elevator appears in the lobby and when the doors close. The doors have a tendency to close while I am trying to get in - which only makes me nervous because I keep waiting for them to close and knock me over. So each day I hope that someone kind will be waiting and will hold the door for me while I get on and off.
Each day brings a new challenge - trying to figure out how to carry things while using two canes. The day it poured rain and the streets were slippery. The day I felt dizzy for no apparent reason and really didn’t know if I could make it down to the car without passing out. The day I misjudged the curb and put all my weight on my left leg, causing unbelievable pain and extra weakness for days. The doors that weigh a ton that I have to figure out how to pull open and hold on to my canes. Walking around corners and having people plow into you. Walking through the streets and hearing the big sigh as someone realizes they are stuck behind the slowpoke. I finally got my ID card this week so riding the Access a Ride vans is my challenge this week. The evening trip takes over two hours home because they apparently don’t schedule people that live near each other on the same van - so I’ve been taken all the way through Queens to get to Brooklyn. Due to construction barriers in front of my building, some of the van drivers expect me to cross the street to get to the van - not something I can manage in the allotted time without getting flattened by traffic. I still don’t have my wheelchair approved - so other than work, I feel pretty confined to the house. I hope things will look a little brighter once I can get up and out once in a while.
I try not to focus on the things I can’t control - what if there were an emergency and we had to evacuate the building - or worse, the city. What if it snows? What if I fall again? Or the biggie - What if I never get any better than this and this is my life?
So that’s where I’ve been. What’s new with you all?
April 2006:
All aboard for Disney World. I love Disney World - I could go there for vacation every year and still find things to do and see and enjoy. Getting around was a little tricky - broken foot, crutches, etc. But we rented a scooter and I managed pretty well. We had a lot of fun. I love just hanging out with my kids. They’ve turned out to be such great people - intelligent and kind and funny. Even if they weren’t my kids I would still like to hang out with them.
May 2006 - June 2006:
Foot making excellent progress. Starting to exercise again, getting out of the house & re-immersing myself in life. Feels good to be “me” again. Sean leaves for the Annapolis - the house seems empty and quiet. I worry about him constantly. During Plebe Summer they are only allowed a few phone calls home - for very short periods, and no emails. When I speak to him he says he is fine but he seems much more serious.
July 2006 - September 2006: Work suddenly gets crazy. Rumors of a merger and/or takeover by another company are flying around. Lots and lots of overtime. Amanda is working full-time and not around very much. In August we go to Parents weekend in Anapolis. Sean looks great and after a few hours of teasing by Amanda is back to his old self. Leaving after that weekend is harder than it was to leave the first time.
September 2006 - December 2006: Amanda finishes up her last few high school classes and prepares for a school sponsored trip to China in the Spring. She is learning Mandarin and doing amazingly well. Despite the fact that she has sufficient credits to graduate in January, she decides to stay in school until April so she can take advantage of the China trip and a paid internship at Fashion Institute of Technology. She applies to several colleges but has her heart set on Manhattanville College as it is far enough away to live on campus but close enough to home to come home whenever she wants (1.5 hours by trains).
January 2007: Amanda finds that she has not been accepted into Manhattanville. She is crushed. She did however get into several other colleges, including U-Mass, which she ultimately decides to attend. I try to reconcile myself to the fact that both of my “babies” are going to be living 4+ hours away from me.
February 2007: Amanda breaks up with her boyfriend of three years. I am just as sad as she is - although I know she’s too young to settle down with someone, Billy has become one of the family and I will miss having him around all the time. I also worry about who she will date now - so far I’ve been lucky and she’s skipped the “bad boy” stage.
March 2007: Amanda travels up to Boston to visit friends and meets someone new (friend of a friend). They immediately start spending all their time online or on the phone together. Within the month she is “in love”. I have major issues with this guy - as he is ten years older than her (28 to her 18). Several ugly fights ensue. This is the first time my daughter and I have really fought - we’ve always been very close. The whole thing is very stressful. Meantime, takeover of my company has been confirmed. An Australian company will be taking over within a few months. Despite assurances that I will have a job when everything is settled, I still worry.
April 2007: I am sick all month. Always feeling tired and run down I go through a bad head cold, major sinus infection, very bad tooth infection, and stomach cramps one right after the other. I go to work and come home and go to bed. My head hurts, my throat hurts, my arms hurt, my legs hurt. Bad, bad month. I put it all down to stress from job uncertainty and arguing with Amanda.
May 2007: I am at work the first week of May and walking down the hallway from the copier back to my desk. Without any warning, my left leg just seems to go numb and gives out on me. I fall in the hallway. Embarrassed, I accept help getting up, brush myself off and go back to my desk. Not sure what happened, I tentatively walk around my desk and everything seems to be okay except for the pain in my knees, which is where I landed. I go home and figure that since it’s Friday, I have time to rest and relax and I’ll feel better by Monday. I take the subway home. By the time I get off the subway my legs are both feeling weak and I have shooting pains in my left leg. I assume it’s because of the fall. I go home and go to bed. Saturday I get up in the morning and find that I cannot support my own weight. My husband fishes out my old cane from my broken foot days and I hobble around the house. I decide that if I don’t feel better by Monday I will call in sick and go see the doctor. By Sunday I am considerably worse. I fall on the way to the bathroom. My husband decides to take me to the Emergency Room.
I wind up spending a week in the hospital and go through every test imaginable - Cat Scans, MRIs, and X-rays of my legs, back, and head; Blood Tests; Neurological Tests; a Spinal Tap. Finally I am told that it appears I have had a virus in my system - probably for at least a couple of months (which they base on the fact that I had felt sick and tired for so long). The virus has caused nerve and possibly muscle damage. I am given a blood transfusion and advised to go to a Rehab Center to build up the muscles in my legs again. Instead, feeling better after a week in the hospital, I go home. I spend a week at home resting and decide I can go back to work.
All goes well for two days. On the third day I am walking down the stairs of the subway on my way home and my left leg collapses again. I sit on the stairs for almost an hour before I get the strength to stand up and get on a train to go home. When it’s time to get off I am clinging to the poles and doors because my legs feel that they are going to give out on me at any moment. I get to the exit stairs and call my husband to come and meet me & I sit there and wait for him. For the next several days I spend my time visiting with and talking to various specialists - none of which have a definitive answer for me. My official diagnosis becomes Idiopathic Peripheral Neuropathy, which basically seems to mean I have leg weakness and pain that cause me to be unable to walk and no one seems to know exactly why.
June 2007: Things get progressively worse. I go from being able to hobble around with my cane with intermittent periods of weakness where I have to sit to being unable to walk the vast majority of the time with intermittent periods of ability to walk. I use a wheelchair to get the few feet from my bedroom to the bathroom. I fall getting out of the chair one night and after that I start experiencing panic attacks when I attempt to leave my bed. My internist prescribes Zoloft for the panic attacks which pushes them back enough so that I can force myself to get from the bed to my chair and from my chair to the toilet. Getting into the tub to take a shower becomes an impossible dream so I take sponge baths in my chair.
July 2007: More doctors visits, more tests, more questions, no answers. I rarely leave my room except for doctors’ appointments. My daughter brings me lunch every day and my husband brings me dinner. I watch a ridiculous amount of television and sleep more than I ever could have thought possible. I am depressed, lonely, scared, and angry. Amanda is scheduled to leave for Massachusetts at the end of the month but is talking about staying to take care of me. I pull myself together enough to assure her that I will be fine & start wheeling myself out to the kitchen to show her that I can do some things for myself. I don’t want her to feel guilty about leaving me.
August 2007 - September 2007: Finances, which had been tight all summer (disability insurance pays a ridiculously small amount of money every month) are starting to look dire. Bills are overdue. I decide that I will have to figure out some way to return to work. I start to accept that I may never walk “right” again and will have to learn to cope. Basically, I pull my head out of my ass and stop waiting to get better. Life is going to go on - whether I am “better” or not, so I had better figure out how to cope. I make my husband take me to a physical therapist four times a week. After two weeks, I am able to walk very brief periods of time using two canes or a walker. I apply to my insurance company for approval of a Power Wheelchair. I start to research my transportation options - traveling into NYC with a wheelchair is just not feasible on the subway. I consider the Express Bus but after getting feedback from an online support group, I apply for “Access-a-Ride” which is a service that NYC offers for door to door service for the disabled. The cost is the same as a subway or bus ride but it brings you door to door. Now I just have to get approved. This will involve a trip to their processing center and that prospect seems a little daunting to me.
My panic attacks have gotten much better - when I am in a controlled environment. In my house I do well. In the therapists office I am good. Going back and forth from the car into the house or the doctors I do okay - a little nervous but as long as I have someone to “run interference” for me, I can manage. Venturing out into the real world is going to be a real test though. But I realize that if I’m going to go back to work, I am going to have to get used to being around crowds of people anyway. Midtown Manhattan is not going to slow down or look out for me. So the processing center will be good practice.
I make the appointment, ask my mom to go with me, and nervously await the big day. The morning of my appointment they send a car service to pick us up (round-trip transport to the center is provided for free). Since the wheelchair I have is old and doesn’t fold up, I am using my two canes to get around. It takes me forever to navigate from the front door to the car. My heart is pounding in my chest. We get to the center and my first challenge comes up - the curb. Sounds silly doesn’t it - but curbs and steps without railings are a nightmare for me. Because I have to balance on one foot/cane while I lift the other. And I can never be absolutely sure that the leg I am balancing on will have enough strength to allow me to put all of my weight on it. After a couple of false starts I finally manage the curb. Deep breath. We go into the center which is not just the processing center for Access a Ride - it is also a public health clinic for Medicaid patients. So there are a billion people running in every direction. My mom helps me find my way to a chair up against the wall and gets us registered. We wait for several hours before being called down to the processing center. To get down there I have a choice of stairs or a ramp. You would think the ramp would be a no-brainer and easy to maneuver but any kind of slope puts pressure on my leg muscles. Hard to explain until you experience it - let’s just say that now that I have this problem I realize just how much of NYC is on a slope - seems like they are everywhere. So we slowly make our way down the ramp. The woman who is in charge of my application asks us to follow her back to her office. It seems like a half-mile walk - and it takes me forever. I have to stop several times to get the feeling back into my legs. The woman watches all of this and when we get to her office, she says “I don’t even have to examine you - I can tell just by watching you take this walk, you need our services.” She approves me for full-service for five years. This means that they have to pick me up at the front door - some people have to walk to pre-designated stops. We then wait for the car service to come and bring us home. When he arrives, the car is parked across the street. Due to traffic restrictions, he is unable to pull the car up directly in front of the building. I have to have the car service driver and a worker from the clinic stop traffic for me as I slowly make my way across the street into the car. It is embarrassing and stressful. I can feel the panic attack starting as I’m making my way across. Fortunately my mom is talking to me the whole time saying “Take your time - don’t worry about them.” and I am able to make it into the car without incident. We get home and I immediately go to sleep for several hours - just being out in the world was so exhausting for me that it takes me several hours to recover.
Each day I spend time doing physical therapy & exercising. I do feel like I am getting stronger. I practice my walking with my canes. Soon I am reasonably confident about navigating around the house and can even walk with some confidence from my front door to the car parked in the driveway.
My insurance company is giving me a very hard time about approving the power wheelchair. They keep asking for more information and more documentation. It is very frustrating. The Access a Ride ID card is taking a long time to be sent to me. Even though I know I am approved, I can’t actually use the service without the ID card. They tell me it will take up to three weeks.
I am scheduled to return to work on August 22nd. This is a Wednesday. This seems like a good day because I will have two full days of work (Wed-Thurs) and one half-day (Fridays are half-days in the summer for my company). Then I will have two days to rest. So I will be able to ease back into working. By the time the 22nd comes, I still do not have my ID card or my wheelchair but I am reluctant to wait any longer. Money is a pressing concern and more importantly, I feel like I have been making some forward progress and don’t want to lose momentum. My husband and I talk and agree that he will get up early, drive me into the city and walk me to the elevator. From there I will just have to walk from the elevator to my desk where I can stay put for most of the day (except for bathroom breaks) and then at the end of the day he will pick me up in front of the building. So, in theory, I will not have to do that much walking. I think I can handle it.
In reality - walking just from the car into the building and onto the elevator is ridiculously hard for me. I am terrified of all of the people running around me and past me, not looking where they are going (you have no idea how many people walk around looking at their Blackberries or reading the fucking paper instead of looking where they are going). I cannot dodge people, I just have to keep plodding along and hope for the best. There are ten steps leading from the front door to the lobby where the elevator is. My alternative to the stairs is to walk through a passageway that leads to Grand Central and the side of my building - where there is an elevator lift. The lift is operated by security guards so you have to walk through this passageway of people rushing to get to/from their trains and wait by the lift for the guards to make their way over to the lift. From there I walk to the bank of elevators. If there happens to be no one else waiting for an elevator, I push the button and pray the closest elevator shows up because if it is the far one, there is no chance I will be able to walk down and make it in in the time the elevator appears in the lobby and when the doors close. The doors have a tendency to close while I am trying to get in - which only makes me nervous because I keep waiting for them to close and knock me over. So each day I hope that someone kind will be waiting and will hold the door for me while I get on and off.
Each day brings a new challenge - trying to figure out how to carry things while using two canes. The day it poured rain and the streets were slippery. The day I felt dizzy for no apparent reason and really didn’t know if I could make it down to the car without passing out. The day I misjudged the curb and put all my weight on my left leg, causing unbelievable pain and extra weakness for days. The doors that weigh a ton that I have to figure out how to pull open and hold on to my canes. Walking around corners and having people plow into you. Walking through the streets and hearing the big sigh as someone realizes they are stuck behind the slowpoke. I finally got my ID card this week so riding the Access a Ride vans is my challenge this week. The evening trip takes over two hours home because they apparently don’t schedule people that live near each other on the same van - so I’ve been taken all the way through Queens to get to Brooklyn. Due to construction barriers in front of my building, some of the van drivers expect me to cross the street to get to the van - not something I can manage in the allotted time without getting flattened by traffic. I still don’t have my wheelchair approved - so other than work, I feel pretty confined to the house. I hope things will look a little brighter once I can get up and out once in a while.
I try not to focus on the things I can’t control - what if there were an emergency and we had to evacuate the building - or worse, the city. What if it snows? What if I fall again? Or the biggie - What if I never get any better than this and this is my life?
So that’s where I’ve been. What’s new with you all?