Adventure Time

I have surgery this coming Monday to remove some bone in my right hip that Dr. Dahners thinks may be impacting my range of motion.

In recent days, I have been thinking that range of motion is not my only problem in that hip.  I also have a lot of pain, and it's possible that the pain is not caused by the same bone that is causing the range of motion issues.  Unfortunately, I don't know what is actually going on in there because when I met with Dr. Dahners a week ago, I failed to ask to see the CT scan myself.  Before they cut on me for the 3rd time, I'd like to ask an intelligent question or two about what they are going to cut and what they will leave.  But I can't do that unless I can see the CT scan.

I can get a copy of the CT scan at the hospital.  I just have to get there.  I don't know many people who can help me during a work day.  Tobi was at orientation for a college course she is starting, Gus was helping a neighbor with something all day yesterday so I found myself with an entire day to kill and only one thing I really wanted to do.

I have car I can drive.  There isn't a step in the process I haven't done before.  The more I thought about it, the more excited I got.  Eventually I realized that if I didn't try it, I would regret it.  And so I decided it was time to have an adventure.

First I had to plan.  What are the steps in the plan, and what can go wrong?

1.) Transfer into the car in my parking garage.  First I have to get to the car.  As long as my neighbor is at work, I should be able to get to the driver's door.  I've done a ton of car transfers.  They aren't the easiest, but I think I'm getting pretty good at them by now.  I have to get the wheelchair parts in.  I've proven a couple times that I can do it.  It's really hard, and one of the pieces could roll away where I can't reach it.  If that happens, I'll have to call somebody to come fetch it.  I don't really think that will happen, but I have the number of the Palmisanos across the hall.  They're elderly, but they could probably come wrangle a wheel if I screw up badly enough.  I will also need to check the fuel level.  As long as it's more than a quarter of a tank, I should be fine, but I'm not going to want to take it to a gas station.  That would require an extra pair of car transfers, and I'm not even sure I have the skills to pump gas yet.  That would be a deal breaker.

2.) Drive to the hospital.  It's about a half-hour on the road.  It's the middle of the day so there shouldn't be much traffic.  After trying them out, I'm not really worried about the hand controls.  They are pretty easy to use and pretty intuitive.  I'm slightly concerned that I still have Cullen's license plate on the car, but I can put my new tag in my backpack in case there is a problem.  But there shouldn't be a problem.

3.) Park at the hospital.  There is a handicapped parking lot right in front of the hospital, but I don't think most of the parking spaces have access reserved on the sides of the car.  That makes it fairly useless for me so I'll probably have to park in the parking garage.  The handicapped parking spaces in the garage should be level so transferring out of the car should be about as easy as it gets.  And there are always a ton of people around so if I get in trouble, I can probably flag down a pedestrian.

4.) Roll into the hospital.  I've been in the hospital many times so the only obstacle I'm worried about is the bridge from the garage to the hospital.  It is sloped, and while getting down it is easy, it might be too steep to get back up.  But again, there are always a ton of people around, and people who are generally sympathetic to people in wheelchairs, so I bet somebody will offer help before I get desperate enough to ask.

5.) Return home.  The return trip should just be the reverse of what I've already done.

6.) Park at home.  Depending on what time I get home, my neighbor could be home from work with his car occupying the parking space that I need to use to disembark.  But if that happens, there are some handicapped spaces near the building that I can use.  That shouldn't be a problem.

Once I broke it down into steps, it seemed even more doable.  I knew I would get physically tired from the car transfers, but there should only be 4 of them and I had all day to do them.  When I got home, I could sleep for the rest of the day.

By the time I had formulated my plan and packed up the pills and supplies I might need for a long outing, it was 11:00.  Still plenty of time.  The weather was excellent, and I was excited to get started.  It was the most exciting thing I'd done in a long time.

When I got to the parking garage, I was relieved to see that my neighbor's car was gone so I could access the door.

I put the keys and my phone in the map pocket on the door as I usually do when getting into a car, and I tossed my backpack in.  The transfer into the driver's seat went fine.  Once I got in, I started the car to check the fuel level.  It was less than 1/8th of a tank.  Not nearly enough to make the trip.  But I had spent too much time mentally preparing for an adventure, and I'm a problem solver.  I wasn't ready for the adventure to end before it started.

So I came up with a plan.  I would ask Mr. Palmisano, my elderly neighbor, to ride with me to the gas station across the street and pump my gas.  I'm not even sure the Palmisanos are home, and this request seems like something best explained in person, so I decided to just roll back upstairs and knock on the door.

So I transferred back to the wheelchair.  Midway through the transfer, I realized something wasn't right.  I had lost momentum halfway between the car seat and the chair seat, and found myself stopped directly in between.  I tried again to muscle myself at least partway onto the wheelchair seat which is how a lot of my sloppier transfers end, but for some reason I couldn't get any closer.  I looked down to see if I could figure out what was hanging me up, and... shit.  My left knee was hopelessly jammed in between the front legs of the wheelchair.  I tried to go backwards into the car, but the hand holds I had chosen meant I couldn't push that direction.  I couldn't go forward, and I couldn't go back. It took me a long moment to accept it, but I was going down.

Since my injury over a year ago, I have never fallen out of the wheelchair.  That's good because I don't have the skills or the strength to transfer off the floor.  I haven't even tried it since rehab.  I had always assumed that my first fall would be in my apartment, but that would not be the case.

I was still dangling, mid-transfer, between the car and the chair, but I knew I couldn't stay there for long.  My strength was going to give out any second, and I thought I should probably try to lower myself as gently as possible before weakness dictated an uglier landing.  My biggest concern was the awkward position of my left leg.  I was going to end up sitting on it while it was tangled up in the wheelchair.  I was hoping the position wouldn't be so awkward that I would injure it when my weight came down, but there wasn't really anything I could do about it so I just tried to make sure it happened slowly.

When I got to the ground, it seemed like my left leg wasn't too awkward underneath me, but I was still sitting on my bare ankle which was directly on some very abrasive concrete.  My right foot was still in the car which was probably more awkward than the left leg.  Fortunately I had saved enough strength that I was able to wiggle myself out of the chair and get my right foot free of the car.

If you're looking for something unpleasant to do, try rolling around on the ground in a parking lot.  At least the concrete was dry and relatively clean.  It would have been really unpleasant in a McDonald's lot.  Imagine if there was broken glass or a spilled milk shake.

After all my struggling, I found myself seated on the ground next to my car.  This scenario was not something I had planned for.  I was not supposed to screw up a simple car transfer.

The parking garage was empty.  Fortunately the map pocket where I put my phone was within reach, so I could call for help, but who to call?  I needed was somebody who could physically lift me up and put me in the wheelchair.  The Palmisanos were never going to manage it.  Pretty much everyone I know was at work, and even if I could find somebody to come get me, it would probably take them at least 15 minutes to arrive, and that's if they could drop what they were doing.  Mosquitoes swarm in my building's parking deck, and I wondered if I would have any blood left by the time someone got to me.

Then I had an epiphany.  I recently made friends with the maintenance guy that works in the complex.  He's friendly and strong, and he has a golf cart so he can get here quickly.  So I called Katie at the front office and explained the situation, and she radioed Brett, and he arrived in seconds.

So my adventure did not end the way I had hoped, but if you know how it's going to turn out, it's not really an adventure, is it?  I don't regret it at all.  What did I get out of it, you ask?

• Excitement!  It felt really good to be really excited about something.  And when things didn't go right, that was exciting too.
• Pride.  I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring out a solution to my problem.
• Knowledge.  I learned that I'm not quite ready to drive on my own.  I learned a good way to really screw up a car transfer, and I doubt I'll make that same mistake again.
• Confidence.  It seems counter-intuitive, but I tried something, it went very wrong, and I survived.  Maybe I should try more stuff.
• Interesting stuff to write about.  Usually I have to force myself to write a blog entry.  I wrote this one at 5:30 AM when I really should be sleeping.

What I did not get out of the experience is the CT scan that I wanted from the hospital.  Anybody want to take me on Friday?  Update: I have located a ride to the hospital on Friday.  Thanks, Brittany!

More Surgery

It is once again time to throw some text at my blog and see what sticks.  Here we go.

I went to see Dr. Dahners last week.  I got a new CT scan of my hips, and he thinks he can see some bone in my right hip that it should help to remove.  Therefore, we have scheduled more surgery for August 26th.  My mom will once again be visiting to help me in the first week of recovery.  I hope it helps with my range of motion, but I really hope it helps with the pain.  My right hip hurts a lot lately.  I'm encouraged that the area he suggested cutting on is close to where most of the pain is, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I've been seeing an Occupational Therapist on a weekly basis for my thumb/wrist.  I think it's a little better, but still a concern.  I'm also dealing with pain in my back where they put the metal rods near my spine.  Since I've been moving my back around more and arching my back when sleeping on my front, I can feel the rods poking me more.  It does not feel good.  Just another thing to try to figure out.

My van is back in operation.  It was down for several weeks, and it's fortunate that it died at a time when I had enough flexibility to get into a car.  It's also fortunate that Cullen had a car I could use in the meantime.  We have started calling that car The Raspberry, and I'm currently working on buying it from Cullen.  Oh, and look what I did with it today.

I just did a few laps around the parking lot, and I still need to figure some things out to make it safe in traffic.  I also need a lot of practice with car transfers and getting the chair in and out of the car, but overall, things went really well.  I hope to own this car by the end of the week and be menacing the highways of North Carolina within the next month.  Maybe sooner.

You Get What You Get

I guess it's time to update my blog so here goes.

Overall I'm doing pretty well.  I think my flexibility has pretty much stabilized.  It's okay I guess, but not where I'd really like it to be.  I have an appointment with Dr. Dahners this week, and I rather expect it to result in more surgery to free up my right hip a little more.  I really don't like the idea of more surgery, but if there's something in there he can remove that will make me more flexible, I think it's important we get it out.

In the last couple weeks, I have been experimenting with sleeping on my stomach.  It's a real pain to get rolled over and comfortable, but it really helps to rest my butt and lets me sit up in the wheelchair comfortably for longer during the day.  Pain in my butt from sitting up continues to be a substantial problem for me, but this definitely helps.  I do worry about my arms falling asleep while sleeping on my stomach.  That is something that has happened to me in the past (pre-injury) where I would wake up with no feeling in either arm.  In the past, I could use my legs to roll around and restore circulation, but if it happened now, I'm pretty sure I'd be stuck there until someone eventually broke into my apartment and found me?  I'm going to try to avoid finding out.

Lately a couple things have happened to me that were pretty disappointing.  My van died several weeks ago (2 or 3), and is still in the shop.  My mechanic has had a hard time finding the problem.  He thinks it is an electrical short somewhere, and those can be murder to track down.  So for several weeks I have been denied the use of my van.  Fortunately, I have had the use of my friend Cullen's old '97 Camry.  I have enough flexibility now to transfer into the passenger seat but my transfers are not elegant or confident so every trip takes a lot of time loading and unloading.

Further complicating my transportation situation, Gus has been busy with family obligations for the last 2 weeks, and will be most of the next week at least.  I've been extremely lucky to have his nearly constant assistance for the last year, but I've come to rely on him heavily.  In his absence, it has been a lot more stressful trying to get to appointments and the grocery store, however when dealing with disappointment I remember some advice I got from Evelyn.

Feel free to use that.  I think it's brilliant. 

Fortunately, my friend Tobi has been taking up a lot of the slack while Gus is gone.  She has taken me to several appointments already and is signed up for 2 more this week.  I'm very grateful to her and her family for making that happen.

I've been seeing a therapist to help me with the tendonitis in my thumb and wrist.  So far it doesn't seem to be helping, and I think it's actually getting worse.  That's just another fun thing I get to deal with.  It's still a serious problem for me, and I don't know what's going to happen with that, but as Evelyn says, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit."

Anyway, in more positive news, I have had some fun the last couple weeks.  I got to have some meals with some people, and yesterday, I went to see a movie with Cullen and Mike and Sue.  It was an older theater, and the wheelchair seating was in the very front and would have been very uncomfortable.  We decided it would be better to sit up in the seats so Cullen and Mike relocated me.

Flattering

It's good to have friends.

My Art

When I first moved into my apartment, my sister bought me some supplies and an instructional video so I could learn how to make balloon art.  She thought it would be something fun I could do to entertain kids.  I thought it was a nice idea, but that I'd probably never do it.

Then this week, I got bored.

My Art

So now I know how to make your basic animals.  Dogs of several types, giraffes, swords in 2 varieties, love birds kissing inside a heart, and a teddy bear holding a tulip.  I'm particularly proud of the kissing birds inside the heart.

These are some other things that I think I can make, but I haven't really practiced.  A pig, a T-Rex, a bunny, a couple types of hats.  I can also make a big flower and a tiny mouse.

I enjoy making the sculptures more than I thought I would, and kids seem to like them.  Evelyn asks for one pretty much every day now.

It wasn't really that hard to learn.  There's really only 3 or 4 basic structures.  There are more complicated sculptures than the ones I know, but even those are really just elaborate combinations the few basic steps.  The hardest thing about it is figuring out how much of the balloon to leave uninflated.  Every time you do a twist, it pushes the air down, so the more twists you want to put in a balloon, the less air you can put in it.  If you put too much, it will pop, and not enough will leave a tail at the end.  I've discovered that some small children really don't like it when you pop a balloon loudly.

So that's what I've been doing with my time this week.  I guess now I'm available for parties.

Exciting News!

If you know me well, then you know how exciting the following news is to me.  There is a new building going up right across Davis Drive from my apartment with the following sign out front.

Yo Quiero Taco Bell

So excited.

Look What I Did

Today I figured out how to do something I haven't been able to do for a year.

The Big Update

I think the better I feel, the less I feel like posting on this blog.  Therefore, you could take my long absence to mean that I'm doing pretty good.  In fact, I think I AM doing pretty well.  I'm getting out more, and I'm in less pain than I had been.  I still have plenty of issues to work on, but overall, I'm feeling pretty good.

Now, I think it's fair to tell you some of the stuff I've been up to.

Shortly after Emily went home, Mike and Sue invited me to go to a Railhawks soccer game with them.  We were playing the LA Galaxy (who did not bring their best players), but nonetheless, the Railhawks won in exciting fashion, and I had a very enjoyable evening out.

Me and Sue and Mike

I have continued to experiment with transferring into cars.  I have learned more about the challenges that will be be involved in driving a car.  Here's a list.

• When I transfer into or out of a car seat, often my pants fall down.  This is especially true if the car seat is cloth.  Since I cannot pull my pants up myself, this is a problem.
• Dis-assembly of the wheelchair once in the car does a fair amount of damage to the chair.  I'm not sure what to do about this yet.
• My wheelchair is pretty large, and very difficult to pass into the car once disassembled.  Especially while learning, I anticipate doing a lot of damage to whatever car I'm using.
• I do not have the flexibility to transfer in to any car.  Gus's 2000 Honda Civic, for instance, has a seat height that is too low, and a door opening that is too small for me to transfer in or out.
• There isn't a lot of room in a modern automobile to put your legs if you don't plan to use the pedals.
• If my legs have a spasm while driving, I could kick the pedals, or worse, get a foot stuck under the brake pedal.  I could use my hands to move my foot to a safe location except that both hands are in constant use when driving with hand controls.

Given these facts, my tentative plan is to get an inexpensive car that I can damage without consequence.  Cullen is selling his old 97 Camry, and if the price is right, this may be a good choice for a temporary car while I learn to drive.  I know I can get in and out, but I will have to get some leather seat covers, and devise a plan to restrain my feet in the event of spasms.  It will also be good to have an inexpensive car while learning to use hand controls in case I drive into something.

Last weekend, my brother came for a visit.  On Friday, we took a road trip up to my sister's house in Virginia where I got to see my niece and nephew for the first time in quite a while.  I was worried they wouldn't remember me, but they did.  I really enjoyed seeing the kids, and they seemed to enjoy showing off their couch gymnastics.

We stayed the night, and then on Saturday, we went to the track where Cullen was doing his first motorcycle race.  No matter how many track days you do, your first race is always exciting, and I wanted to be there to see it.  It was my first time being at a track since my accident, and it felt good to be back.  I was also happy because a lot of my friends were there.  Cullen obviously, and his wife Caitlin, my brother Jonathan, my brother-in-law Jon, Gus, and my friend Bert.  Bert took a bunch of pictures, and here are some of them.

It was the longest I have been outdoors since the accident, so it was fortunate that the weather was great.  It was fun to be outside, but it was very revealing about what it's really like to operate a wheelchair in the real world.  I was able to watch the races, but only from one spot on the track.  The rest of the viewing areas would have required me to negotiate rough terrain which simply isn't worth the effort.  It's highly doubtful I could do it myself, and even with help it would be a pretty big challenge.

At one point, I needed to urinate, and therefore needed to use the one handicap accessible stall in the bathroom.  Of course, somebody (not handicapped) was taking a dump, so I had to wait 10 minutes to take a leak in an otherwise empty bathroom.  I can't really criticize as I've enjoyed the luxury of the handicap stall, but this is how I expect things to be from now on.  Extreme inconvenience all the time.

Jonathan and I came directly home from the track after the races.  In the morning, Jonathan had put some compression socks on me so I could use shoes at the track instead of the ridiculous boot things I have been wearing.  When we got home, Jonathan removed the socks to discover that the toenail that was damaged in the crash a year ago had been torn off, probably when the socks were put on that morning.  Jonathan described it as looking like a movie effect designed for maximum shock value.

We didn't know what to do about it, but it seemed like we should do SOMETHING, and it was Jonathan's idea to call Bert's wife Ashley (a doctor) for advice.  Without seeing it, she said we could trim, clean, disinfect, and bandage it until we could get it dealt with by a professional on Monday.  So we spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to do that.  It didn't help that we were both pretty freaked out by the sheer goriness of the situation.  I was grateful I couldn't feel it, but my foot spasms indicated that it probably would have hurt pretty bad.

If your curiosity is greater than your fear of disgusting wounds, you may want to look at these pictures we took.  You can also relive a lot of the experience we had trying to squeamishly decide what to do about it in these videos.

Video1
Video2
Video3

What we ended up doing was soaking it in soapy water, putting some iodine on it, and bandaging it up with the nail intact.  Then we left it that way until Monday when I got an appointment with a podiatrist who pulled it off like it wasn't a big deal.

The other worrisome problem I'm dealing with is a weird problem with my right thumb.  For the last two weeks, I've had a problem where I get this intense pain in my wrist when I move my thumb certain ways.  The weird thing about it is that it seems to be aggravated when I DON'T move the thumb for a while.  It is worst when I first wake up in the morning, but any time I don't move my hand for any length of time, when I go to move again, it starts to pop.  It feels like a muscle attached to my thumb catches on something in my wrist and twangs like a guitar string as it moves back and forth over the obstruction, but then gets better as it moves.  It seems like a weird problem, but it's at least a little bit sore all the time now.  Since I have to use that hand for literally everything now, I'm worried it could become a very serious problem.  I've been waiting to see if it got better on its own, but I have an appointment with the rehab doctor on Monday, and I'll bring it up.  Maybe she'll send me to a hand specialist.  Stay tuned.