T Plus one day

So, we've been home a day. And most of you are wondering how it is going. We're both tired, but things are coming along nicely.

First impressions. Linda's new wheelchair is wider than her old one. That's good because her loaner was too narrow for her hips. But it's also an adjustment. After a few months you become accustomed to where you can fit. Linda can still make it through the house doors (except the bathroom of course), but it's harder than when we practiced, and I noticed she has bruised one of her hands. I removed the door to our bedroom to make that easier--we never closed it anyway. I also cleared stuff away from the doors so she can hit them more straight on. We'll see how Linda adapts. Worst case, we remove the rails and she has to push on the tires (which means getting dirty hands). She hasn't asked for that yet.

I've been completely busy around the house. My first task was to get more grab bars up. I got pretty good ideas about where we would need bars when we visited. I put up 3 bars yesterday and one this morning. One perk to all this work is that Linda doesn't have to walk sideways with her walker just to go to the bathroom. There are enough holds that she can walk securely without her walker, and it is much easier.

This morning I got Jon B. to run me around to hardware stores and we got the makings for a back step. The back door has a 12" step--pretty hard for Linda. We built a 6.25" step for the back that is deep enough for Linda's walker. She can step down, reposition the walker, and step down again; another great improvement in ease. I'm so proud of our step. Total construction time was 55 minutes and it was almost perfectly square and level. I had to put only the smallest of wood chips under one corner to make it completely wobble free.

I also did a bit of plumbing. I had to put a new neck on the shower. It went fine, but I was reminded of doing things like that on the farm as a kid. Back then, when I was small, it was sometimes my job to go down with the plumber into wells that needed work. Mostly, I had to hold stuff, like the Teflon tape. Very hand stuff that. I used some today. Sometimes I feel like my whole life was practice for the last few months.

I still haven't put away our stuff. It's not that easy moving back into a house you haven't occupied for 4 months. Not only do we have extra stuff from the hospital, but some of our old stuff is in the way. Just about everything you do is a potential problem for a wheelchair. For example, the air conditioner is in the front room, so we are accustomed to using a fan in the hallway to move air to the back of the house. You can step around a fan, but you can't wheel around one, so that's out. Every time I lay something down, I realize it's in a wheelchair path. I'm going to have to learn new places to put things.

We did find time to go to the coffee shop and discovered that several of our friends anticipated that and showed up to visit. Smart people, our friends.

Linda and I went to Hy Vee this afternoon. I noticed that the doors in are pretty narrow. I notice all kinds of things like that now. I wonder what you do if you have a slightly bigger chair than Linda's. Maybe you just don't by groceries! Yeah right. Maybe you shop at Walmart.

When we left Hy Vee, I had my second handicap parking annoyance. If you've looked, proper handicap spaces are nice and wide. That's particularly important for us, because Linda needs room to get the wheelchair up on the passenger side of the car. So I always park on the left side of the space. Someone decided that the extra space would be a good place to park their car, 2/3 in our space and 1/3 in the next handicap space. No room for a wheelchair. The passenger was waiting in the car, so I asked him to move his car (well, technically I didn't ask, but he knew what he needed to do). Their handicap placard apparently belonged to the passenger, because he hobbled around painfully to drive the car through to an empty space just across. Missouri tags 104 TKH.

This evening left me swamped. Linda used to do more cooking than I did, but often we did some things together. I'm pretty much doing most of that right now. We had grilled ham, steamed asparagus, and watermelon tonight. Linda needed some help eating the watermelon, but not so much. Picking out the seeds with a fork makes a great OT exercise.

She's sleeping now. I should get to bed too, since she'll wake me up tomorrow at 6:30am and want to start the day.