Category: A Bit Of Randomness

I left my house today. That is the first time that I have been outside since December 15th. I got my haircut and eyebrows waxed on the 15th but I left my house because I had a wheelchair evaluation appointment downtown at RIM (Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan). You see, I have had a motorized wheelchair since July of 2018. I am not up for a replacement chair until July of 2023. But now, after 3 1/2 years of use, my motorized chair is having problems. It is not holding a charge very long at all and the wear and tear of the armrests, the head rest, and my pelvis stabilizer need to be addressed, just to name a few things.

My Mom drove me downtown in a rented van that was accommodated my power chair. We had a lot of paperwork to fill out before my appointment. My Mom, as my caregiver, is my secretary. She accompanies me to all of my doctors appointments and she does the rwriting for me because I cannot write anymore. She will fill out the paperwork and have me sign it. That is the only thing I have muscle memory enough to write. That and as a 39-year-old woman, I am legally obligated to sign things at times. Especially when it comes to my medical needs! We plugged my chair into the wall as she filled the papers out because we brought my battery pack with us. Once all that was finished, we got directions to where we were going and then we got in the elevator because we were headed to the second floor.

I was able to propel myself around the corner to the elevator, get into the elevator, get out of the elevator on the second floor, make the turn to see where I needed to go but then, my wheelchair beeped and stopped moving. I have figured out that if I turn the chair off and then turn it back on, sometimes I will get enough power to move. I have been sitting in front of my TV with my chair charging most of the day for the past couple weeks. I turned my chair off once it beeped and stopped moving. My Mom walked up next to me and once I turned the chair back on I flipped it into indoor fast and I started moving and I called over to my shoulder to my Mom that I have to go and I will see her there.

I stopped when I saw Diane standing in her office. She introduced me to his Chris, the wheelchair tech from a company that Dave just started working at. It will be my new wheelchair company. They plugged my chair in as we all talked. I was quite impressed at hearing Diane and Chris talk to each other. They figured out a game plan and I sat there in awe of all of this competence! Tomorrow, my Mom is going to call National Seating & Mobility to have them make an appointment for my wheelchair to be seen.

I will NOT accompany my Mom on that trip and it makes me a little bit nervous but I need to not be seated in my chair to get the batteries and everything else worked on. Diane said that it’s always best to take the chair to Troy to their office resident having them come to see me. She said that that’s only because they have a lot of needed supplies to fix what needs to be fixed once they put my chair up on the lift and check out all the mechanical things going on. So we’ll just have to see I guess! It is strange that Diane and Christie told me 3 1/2 years ago that this chair will become an extension of myself. I told Diane that she is 100% correct but I still have the scars on all my door jambs and moldings based on the time it took for my child to become an extension of myself! I will never get the door jambs fixed because it’s proof of who I have been.

Today, I had a memory of my Dad sitting at his place in the dining room. I had this thought and clear picture in my mind because my Mom and I were talking about my Mom taking the car to Warholak it to get the tires checked. Every time I think of that place, I think of my Dad because it smelled like it did in my Dad‘s truck. I think of Mike and Paul being my Dad‘s friends and the banter they used to have with each other. I was thinking of my Dad when Sean called. He asked me if I was with my Mom and I told him that I was, he asked her if he knew someone. Apparently, that someone came to the door and asked after my brother, Ray. The someone who came to the door was a handyman who did work at our house when I was a child. Sean used both of this man’s names and once he asked my Mom, I immediately asked her, “Mark The Carpenter?!”

As my Mom and I completed our routine today, I had all of these thoughts and memories of my Dad and I just started to cry. 15 years after my Dad‘s death, these tears don’t come as often but when they do, they easily flow down my cheeks. I’m not embarrassed by them and I do not try to stop them but they just flow until I am done thinking about him. Once I was finished crying, I told my Mom that I was going to write a blog post about it. She recently went to her house and was able to retrieve the picture that I wanted to share on her 50th wedding anniversary last October. I will share that here and now because my thoughts are about my Dad and I have wanted to share this picture. I remember that I bought this picture frame at Target years after this picture was taken but before my Dad died. Another clear memory I have had for pretty much my entire life is the fact that this passage has been underlined in our family Bible. My mom loves these verses.

So, I guess that I am feeling quite vulnerable today but I don’t feel embarrassed by all of the tears I seem to be crying today. I just miss my Dad! is it it’s like this sometimes even 15 years in, I guess, for me, right now, it’s a time to weep.

Let me explain for you the whirlwind I have been in since my power wheelchair has been having problems. My Mom and I figured out that my chair was not holding a charge so I keep it charging all day while I watch TV. My house is very small and I don’t move around that much. It’s probably less than 10 feet from my bed to my TV in the other room. We talked and decided that I should call Diane at RIM to get my chair looked at. Take a look at how quickly and with such precision she works!:

I called her on December 19th late in the evening to leave a message for her to call me back. I woke up to a voicemail from her on December 20th that said she had also left a message with my Mom. She spoke with my Mom in the next couple days and told my Mom to have me send her copies of the front and back of both of my insurance cards. My insurance has changed since I first received my chair and now in addition to being on Medicaid, I am also on Medicare now. She also told my Mom to tell me to leave a message with my doctor to get prescriptions for both a “Wheelchair Evaluation” and a “Wheelchair repair.”

Brad, my wheelchair tech. came to my house on December 23rd. He did the evaluation and adjustments I needed to my armrests and my foot pads and then would talk to Diane about what I needed to do next regarding repair of my chair. Brad told me that day as soon as he came in and hooked my chair up to some kind of hand held voltage/Watt evaluator and told me that my batteries were not holding a charge. I did not know that I had more than one battery in my chair and I have been riding this thing for 3 1/2 years!

So, I already had the diagnosis of my wheelchair before Christmas and it wasn’t until after New Year’s dad I had an appointment to have my chair evaluated downtown at RIM. I went down to RIM with my Mom to get my chair evaluated on January 4th. It was there that Chris told my Mom to call NSM (National Seating & Mobility) set up an appointment what for my chair to come in and the worked on. Diane explained to us that it is better to have my chair go to the office instead of have them come to my house because if they get my chair on site, they have all the necessary components that I might need in the repair of my chair.

Chris and Diane both said that it is best if I do NOT accompany the chair to their office. Where am I going to sit?! I am in my chair most of my waking hours! My Mom just made the appointment for Monday. My chair is going out to Troy for a noon appointment. We rented a van to take my chair there. I will remain at my house. We have figured out that my Mom will get me out of bed and into my manual wheelchair and then Sean will come here to be with me while my Mom is in Troy with my wheelchair.

so, it seems that from late in the evening of December 19 to January 10 my wheelchair will be scheduled for a, “Tune-up.”

I am reminded of a video I used to watch when I was a child. The Adventures of Scuffy the Tugboat. My son just transferred me to my custom manual chair. I got my manual chair when I was still working and it was completely paid for by my insurance. But then, I was injured and needed to get a power chair. It is a little over seven times more expensive than my custom manual chair but my custom manual wheelchair will have to do now.

My Mom is almost here to take my chair to get serviced. I thought of that video because like Scuffy, I want to say to my chair, “Goodbye, friend!” as he was floating downstream away from what he knew.

I know this post is late because Sidney Poitier died a while ago but I just watched To Sir with Love last night. I found out that he died when I woke up in the afternoon hours and checked my phone just after I sent my morning prayer. I did not post about his death until I spoke with my cousinT, Shannon.

I called her for a number of reasons. The first reason I called her was because I will NEVER be able to forget the summer we spent watching this movie over and over again! We sang each and every time we watched it! I was 17 that summer and I had already known that I was going to go to college to become a teacher. We watched this movie snd Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We sang along with that movie as well!

but I think the reason I CANNOT EVER forget that summer is the fact that we watched both of these movies on her TV in her basement that was on it’s last leg. So much so, the picture was just a thin line showing in the middle of the TV. The audio was working fine and we were not bothered by not being able to see the picture. We KNEW what was going on!

The second reason I wanted to talk to her was because she is one of the people I speak to regularly on the phone. We love to talk and we have always had easy conversation. I’ve known her for my whole life! I just had my virtual appointment with my speech pathologist and she told me that my conversational speech sounds better than reading the things she has given me to read. She modified our game plan and next week, I am reading two articles she will send me and we will discuss them together. Here is the trailer to To Sir with Love:

I actually cried when I watched this movie. I cried because I WAS a teacher, I took my kids on field trips, I think, overall, that I had a good rapport with my students. I had a flood of memories that made me think of teaching was extreme fondness. One memory that stuck in my head was one of my field trip to the Detroit Zoo. Go figure that the day we were going, it rained! It was beautiful the day before and the day after! Not only did it rain, it was cold! I had arranged for Little Caesars Hot ‘N Ready pizzas to be delivered to their pavilion but in the planning, I overlooked paper plates and napkins! I was in my manual chair back then and it wasn’t even custom yet. I remember commenting on their pink faces in the pavilion and I told them to get warm by holding the pieces of pizza with their hands because I forgot the plates!

The memory I thought of was toward the end of the day and I was by the entrance and the kids were coming to get on the bus, I saw A student with a soaking wet sweatshirt. He had his hoodie on and had his hands inside the sleeves. I apologized to him for our field trip being, “A COMPLETE FAIL” but as he approached me, he had a broad smile on his face and shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s better than being at school! The teachers who came with us told me that the students were not complaining and that made me feel better that it was not a fail completely.