Closer

Since I was five, I have known what I wanted to be and how I wanted to look. Despite literally having dreams about it, I put it aside. I did it very effectively, too, because it remained mostly buried for decades.

I wanted long leg braces. I wanted black ankle boots. I wanted a wheelchair. I wanted forearm crutches. And yes, I wanted the disability to go along with it.

Again, I tamped it all down, knowing it must be impossible.

And what a painful thing to learn that it was possible, but financially out of reach.

Within the past two months, I have found and brought home the wheelchair and the black ankle boots. The boots are unbelievably perfect. And I'm saving them for special. I already had the forearm crutches. I bought a pair of orthopedic shoes from a thrift store and found it was possible to create about a 2" difference in height. Walking in them with the forearm crutches was so good. So much closer than I ever dreamed.

Lately, I'd been concentrating on getting an AFO, preferably a right AFO to guard my weak right ankle.

And suddenly, I am the owner of a set of AFOs. They are home made, but passable.

I am learning to maintain and repair the chair. I know what adjustments I need on the forearm crutches, which again, I do myself. All of this is changing me slowly, changing who I am and how I think.

I look at curb cuts in a completely different way now and am surprised at how many of them fail to meet muster.

Double doors are an annoyance of larger proportions than I'd realized.

I'm getting closer.

I doubt I'll ever get all the way to where I want to be, but getting closer is the important thing for now.

First Wheelchair-related Injury

I managed to get the chair un-frozen. And I learned that I could wheel around in my house on one caster with little problem.

I'd seen a couple of nifty You Tube videos on popping wheelies and while I had done one accidentally last Sunday, I decided I needed to master them.

I wheeled over to an empty area of the living room, managed a wheelie and promptly landed on my back. I also hit my head on something relatively hard. It turned out to be the basket with all the cat toys in it. Ow. I mean...ow.

Using my injured head, I decided to try it against something softer - like the couch. Much better.

I wouldn't say that I've mastered the wheelie but I've got a good start at it.

Grounded

Unless some minor miracle occurs, there will be no flying around for me this weekend.

Mechanical failure. It's a bitch. I have 1 1/2 casters on my chair.

And this is very embarrassing but my folding chair does not want to unfold. It spent this past week in the trunk of my car and while it didn't get jostled around very much, I wondered if it could have frozen shut. It's been in the house for hours now.

I knew it would be futile to go out in the mainstream looking for that very peculiar six-sided bolt that holds the caster into the prope

r position, but I did give it a try. Truthfully, I want a few spares of the caster-holder-onner assembly.

Of course there are lessons to be learned everywhere and I have learned a couple of things here.

One is that wheelchairs are very complicated machines. If you're going to ride one, you need to know how to maintain it.

Another is that I'm never going to be out without some little toolkit with me.

I will likely spend the weekend trying to find out if any of the wheelchair supply and repair stores around here are open on weekends.

But first I've got to be able to get in the chair.

Another Scream in the Night

At exactly 1:38 this morning, some mysterious and formless assailant crept into my bedroom, grabbed my left leg and stabbed me repeatedly with a stiletto. Every muscle in the back of my calf bunched and it felt like the stiletto was twisted around and around, like winding spaghetti onto a fork.

Without being aware that I was doing it, I started to scream. I have quite a set of pipes on me. I screamed while trying to get out of the bed, out of the sheets wound around me, away from the cats that just didn't understand the disturbance.

I finally made it out of bed and saw that my heel was pulled up and back about three inches. I stopped screaming, but each time I tried to gently stretch out the spasm, it went back into that fist-sized knot.

This is the leg I hurt last summer. My first wake-up-screaming episode was in September, 2009. This was only the second one, but I have to say, I'm not a fan. I wonder if there's some sort of scarring on the muscle - not that I even know that this can happen - and wonder if surgery could keep it from happening again.

Weirdly, I would be afraid that the surgery would go awry somehow. And hope that it would, somehow. And at the same time, realize that were my perverse wishes to come true, these muscle spasms would likely be a part of it.

The screams in the night bother. But they don't.

Warming the Hearts of Do-Gooders Since 10:30 EST

When I put the chair together after it was shipped to me, I looked at one of the casters and said, "That's probably not on right."

I was right, but it took three trips to the outside world to find out for sure.

The good news is that I have found the perfect place to cruise. It's a mall, of course, and it has a bookstore on one end, but all the flooring surfaces meet my criteria.

I encountered my first do-gooder as I was going up the slight (slight? Really?) ramp to the bookstore entrance. My casters smacked against uneven pavement with dirty water splashing up on me. I nearly did my first wheelie and it was not intentional.

A guy pushing his kid in a stroller leapt forward out of nowhere and said, "May I help?"

After the third time I'd taken a run at the door sill and still hadn't made it, I said yes.

Somehow he got me and the stroller in the door. God bless. I really wasn't looking forward to getting the entire back half of me drenched in filthy water.

I went to the posh food court and got myself a tasty early lunch. Twin girls turned around and looked at me. They were Asian and looked to be about the same age. One was fascinated by me. She was about three and was all staring wonder. Cute kid. Seriously.

On my way back through the bookstore, I picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice (and thank you, no, I do not have a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Thank you very much.) and as I was cruising against a far wall, I felt a weird "ka-chunk" and the chair pitched forward and to the right, nearly pitching me out. I dropped my gloves, my sunglasses, my Visa card and laying on the floor next to all of this was one of the bolts that held the caster on.

I think this is when I dropped the f-bomb. It might have even been the m-bomb f-bomb. I straightened myself up, put the remaining stuff in my lap onto a bookshelf and tried to reach the stuff I'd dropped.

Here I began muttering and a woman asked, "Can I help?" I rolled my eyes at myself, just annoyed as hell at me, and said, yes, I did. She handed me the stuff from the floor, I thanked her and she moved on.

I sat there for a moment, pondering my situation.

I checked underneath the chair. The caster was still on, although pointing backward. I tried to balance and found if I kept my weight to the back and to the left, and moved very slowly, I was okay.

Finally at the check-out counter nearest the door, I dropped my gloves again, tilted forward perilously and the store clerk came around to ask me if I was okay and handed me my gloves. If I could have safely done an "oh, f- me," face palm, I would have.

I got to the door, my chair lurched again, but I knew I was okay going out. I just hoped I didn't pitch face forward into a pool of filthy water. The dean of the Physics department at Princeton rushed up. "Can I help?"

Not unless you've got a toolkit in your trunk. His sons watched me pass.

I went across to the parking lot verrrryyy slowly. I stopped traffic. As I approached my car, a very snazzily dressed older Russian woman called out, "Kin I hilp you?"

"No, no. No. No, thanks. I'm fine."

"Are you sssurrrre?"

"Yep. Yeah. I'm fine. I got it. Thank you."

A pregnant pause and then she shouted, "You are hheeeerroe!"

Oh, f- me. Now I'm a hero.

I managed to get into the car without requiring a dozen people to run to my aid.

Well. Ahem. I guess my good deed is done for the day. I made at least ten people feel good about helping me.

And I'm an f-ing hero.

Ha.

Limits to Mobility

I'm at home today and likely will be tomorrow, too. Where I live is smack in the middle of Snowmageddon. There are about eight inches on the ground right more and probably at least another four to come.

My wheels likely would not be happy in this, any kind of wheels.

But here's something else - I probably couldn't wheel today. I have arthritis in my right hand that is normally managed down to annoyance level, but today, it hurts all the way up to my elbow. I've also got some kind of strained or pulled muscle in my shoulder. All told, I can't do much with my right arm at all today.

These things happen. There are some days when you have no choice but to stay close to home.