Dec 27, 2006 – Jan 1, 2007
Happy New Year!
A smattering of thoughts since the last entry.
Turns out the quotes for modifying a Toyota Sienna were turned into the Voc Rehab Dept. on Dec. 11. The person who needs to review them is out of office until Jan. 3 – don’t know when she left the office, but since there was no message from her left while we were in Day Program, we assume she hasn’t done any work on our case. She is the one who will tell us what, if anything, the state will pay for the modifications.
On the 27th Gary went to another party. I took him to the Kuperbergs. We got to practice curbs, because in order to get the wheelchair into the house we went in the back way, and there was a step up to a porch and then another step up from the porch into the house. Wlodek offered to help, but I wanted to do it, since Wlodek isn’t going to necessarily be around when Gary needs to get up such a curb ;-). It went fine – perhaps the height was a little higher than we’d practiced at Shepherd, since I found that I had to tilt Gary back a little when he did his stationary wheelie in order to get the castor wheels up on the next level, whereas at Shepherd Gary got the wheels up on his own, me just holding his push handles.
I went home and ate and laid down for a while – I was feeling tired. Besides, I’d met my quota of one party every fifteen years ;-). When I went back to get Gary, Pam Holmes came up and greeted me. Soon after, she was snapping photos of Gary and me. A inordinate number of them, I thought :-). Later I asked Gary if she’d been taking photos of everyone. Gary said he didn’t know, that he hadn’t been aware of her taking photos. He then mentioned that there is a woodpecker (the ivory-billed, I later found out) that was thought to be extinct but recently people have claimed to have evidence of; in fact, researchers from our university claim to have evidence that suggests the bird is living along a river in the Florida Panhandle. Evidently no one has a clear photo of it, however – just blurry video. Gary then went on to say that perhaps Pam felt this was a rare sighting of the “Peg Daniels bird” and she now has photographic proof that it is not extinct. Ho-ho ;-)
Gary found an email group on the web of people with SCIs. He says there are some stupid ones out there. One paraplegic said he'd fallen out of his wheelchair, and although it hadn't hurt (he has an incomplete injury, so there was the possiblility it might have), his leg had swollen to twice the size of the other one, and when his knee was in bent position, "something funny sticks out." He wondered if he should go see a doctor. Another paraplegic had a sore on his butt. He wasn't sure if it was a bedsore, but it bleeds when he touches it. He too wonders if he should see a doctor. Duh!
Gary has another common problem of paraplegics: his hair sticks straight out in the morning. Pre-injury, he would dunk his head under the faucet in the bathroom sink. Unfortunately, he can’t roll his chair up close enough to any sink in the house in order to dunk his head. So far he has not come up with a solution that would enable him to dunk his head without getting himself or his chair all wet.
He *has* discovered that with the changes they made on his chair at Shepherd – namely, the fact that they made it narrower – he can do a three-sixty in kitchen. So that is nice – he doesn’t have to roll out of the kitchen, turn around, then roll back in every time he wants to switch directions.
Speaking of discoveries, I discovered my massager that had been “relocated” during the time modifications were being made to our house. Just in time too, since I had given up and had intended to order another one the very day I came across it. Turned out that a box in the dining room/storage room that on top had things like financial statements, on the bottom had various unrelated items. Not only did I discover the massager, but I also found some story research material and a little notebook in which I had put thoughts related to the story I’ve been working on. Glad I found them! The only reason I did was I was wondering how long it would take someone to search through someone’s household box of papers . . . .
Yesterday we had another housecleaner interviewee. Before she came, Gary said, “I wonder what will be wrong with this one?” I said, “Should we ask her?” He said, “Yeah.” And then he pretended to be talking to her: “Why aren’t you going to work out?”
She was supposed to come at 1pm, and at 1:20 we figured we had another no-show. But she arrived at 1:25. She seemed nice (don’t they all), and arrived with her boyfriend who does odd-jobs around the yard – that would be handy. She is in her middle years and has lived in the area for quite some time. We’ll probably just go for her rather than interviewing several people – our careful interviews in the past haven’t done us much good!
Yesterday, Gary started doing some unsupervised transfers, not telling me when he is going to transfer from the wheelchair to the bed or vice versa, or from the wheelchair to the futon. He still wants me there when he goes from futon to chair, however.
I haven’t yet thrown him on the floor so we can practice getting him back in his chair. ;-)
One last random thought for this enty. I never posted a picture of "Nurse Mark" when I posted the other pics of the staff at Shepherd. I managed to snap a shot of him while we were on Day Program, so here it is (if you are getting this entry by email, you can see the pic on the blog at http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/ ):
Happy New Year!
A smattering of thoughts since the last entry.
Turns out the quotes for modifying a Toyota Sienna were turned into the Voc Rehab Dept. on Dec. 11. The person who needs to review them is out of office until Jan. 3 – don’t know when she left the office, but since there was no message from her left while we were in Day Program, we assume she hasn’t done any work on our case. She is the one who will tell us what, if anything, the state will pay for the modifications.
On the 27th Gary went to another party. I took him to the Kuperbergs. We got to practice curbs, because in order to get the wheelchair into the house we went in the back way, and there was a step up to a porch and then another step up from the porch into the house. Wlodek offered to help, but I wanted to do it, since Wlodek isn’t going to necessarily be around when Gary needs to get up such a curb ;-). It went fine – perhaps the height was a little higher than we’d practiced at Shepherd, since I found that I had to tilt Gary back a little when he did his stationary wheelie in order to get the castor wheels up on the next level, whereas at Shepherd Gary got the wheels up on his own, me just holding his push handles.
I went home and ate and laid down for a while – I was feeling tired. Besides, I’d met my quota of one party every fifteen years ;-). When I went back to get Gary, Pam Holmes came up and greeted me. Soon after, she was snapping photos of Gary and me. A inordinate number of them, I thought :-). Later I asked Gary if she’d been taking photos of everyone. Gary said he didn’t know, that he hadn’t been aware of her taking photos. He then mentioned that there is a woodpecker (the ivory-billed, I later found out) that was thought to be extinct but recently people have claimed to have evidence of; in fact, researchers from our university claim to have evidence that suggests the bird is living along a river in the Florida Panhandle. Evidently no one has a clear photo of it, however – just blurry video. Gary then went on to say that perhaps Pam felt this was a rare sighting of the “Peg Daniels bird” and she now has photographic proof that it is not extinct. Ho-ho ;-)
Gary found an email group on the web of people with SCIs. He says there are some stupid ones out there. One paraplegic said he'd fallen out of his wheelchair, and although it hadn't hurt (he has an incomplete injury, so there was the possiblility it might have), his leg had swollen to twice the size of the other one, and when his knee was in bent position, "something funny sticks out." He wondered if he should go see a doctor. Another paraplegic had a sore on his butt. He wasn't sure if it was a bedsore, but it bleeds when he touches it. He too wonders if he should see a doctor. Duh!
Gary has another common problem of paraplegics: his hair sticks straight out in the morning. Pre-injury, he would dunk his head under the faucet in the bathroom sink. Unfortunately, he can’t roll his chair up close enough to any sink in the house in order to dunk his head. So far he has not come up with a solution that would enable him to dunk his head without getting himself or his chair all wet.
He *has* discovered that with the changes they made on his chair at Shepherd – namely, the fact that they made it narrower – he can do a three-sixty in kitchen. So that is nice – he doesn’t have to roll out of the kitchen, turn around, then roll back in every time he wants to switch directions.
Speaking of discoveries, I discovered my massager that had been “relocated” during the time modifications were being made to our house. Just in time too, since I had given up and had intended to order another one the very day I came across it. Turned out that a box in the dining room/storage room that on top had things like financial statements, on the bottom had various unrelated items. Not only did I discover the massager, but I also found some story research material and a little notebook in which I had put thoughts related to the story I’ve been working on. Glad I found them! The only reason I did was I was wondering how long it would take someone to search through someone’s household box of papers . . . .
Yesterday we had another housecleaner interviewee. Before she came, Gary said, “I wonder what will be wrong with this one?” I said, “Should we ask her?” He said, “Yeah.” And then he pretended to be talking to her: “Why aren’t you going to work out?”
She was supposed to come at 1pm, and at 1:20 we figured we had another no-show. But she arrived at 1:25. She seemed nice (don’t they all), and arrived with her boyfriend who does odd-jobs around the yard – that would be handy. She is in her middle years and has lived in the area for quite some time. We’ll probably just go for her rather than interviewing several people – our careful interviews in the past haven’t done us much good!
Yesterday, Gary started doing some unsupervised transfers, not telling me when he is going to transfer from the wheelchair to the bed or vice versa, or from the wheelchair to the futon. He still wants me there when he goes from futon to chair, however.
I haven’t yet thrown him on the floor so we can practice getting him back in his chair. ;-)
One last random thought for this enty. I never posted a picture of "Nurse Mark" when I posted the other pics of the staff at Shepherd. I managed to snap a shot of him while we were on Day Program, so here it is (if you are getting this entry by email, you can see the pic on the blog at http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/ ):
posted by Peg Daniels at 7:25 AM
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