Coping with Stairs and other nuisances

I was very fortunate to have an ambulance approved by worker's comp to bring me home after my surgery (and even the EMTs agreed it was a very good idea once they saw the entrance to my home). I live in a house that is totally NOT handicap accessible and knew my stairs leading from the street up to my front porch would be a nightmare. Thanks to the EMTs, that nightmare was averted...until today, that is.

My sister is here visiting as was a good friend of mine and my partner was home from work, so we all decided it would be a good time to "practice" doing these treacherous stairs, beginning with a steeper than average step down from my front door to my porch. I had my walker handy as well as my crutches and, with THREE people ready to step in to help, I figure this would be doable.

So, with the front door now open and a broken storm door awaiting my exit (hinge needs to be replaced), I became immediately aware of the presence of several of my eight curious cats. Oops, didn't factor this into the mix! So, while my sister, Karen, took the role of shooing them away from time to time, my partner, Lucy, waited for me to step down on to the porch. Where was I in all of this? Oh yeah, I was like a deer in headlights (make that HALOGEN headlights) trying to comprehend just HOW to do this. Total brain fart, no clue whatsoever how to make something seemingly simple come to fruition. It reminded me so vividly of those (many) press conferences with President Bush when he was asked a question that required depth, command, and intelligence and none of the three was in stock that day.

So, at least five minutes later, after Lucy painfully dragged over a heavy slate step to place on the porch to make this first step not be such a doozy for me, I knew of no other way to do it than to put most of my weight on her (on my right side which is where the bad ankle is) and slide slowly down to my good foot. Quickly, I positioned my other crutch under my right armpit and wobbled a bit before managing to get down to the porch. I'm probably not being very clear in describing this, but, for the life of me, I just could not compute how to accomplish this task today, and, even with several others looking on, it just wasn't happening with ease!

The other sidebar here is that, after posting my full weight on crutches during this long delay while we tried to figure all this out for a good 5 to 7 minutes, I was getting incredibly fatigued. Still to be decided was how amother task would get done" "how do I get down the few porch steps I have and manage to get from there to where my car will be?" My neighbor luckily has a paved sidewalk and driveway and we all agreed it made better sense to cut across his front lawn and get in my car there for my upcoming MD appointment (on Thursday). Still, with a partner and sister who are beyond my own age and not in terrific physical shape, we realized that we needed to find a suitable "steady Eddie" who can help us pull this off later this week. (Luckily, it appears we found the right candidate - my neighbor - he has all the attributes: rock solid, strong, and fearless....which NONE of us were today!

To summarize, this was just downright exhausting to go through, both physically and mentally, as the sheer din of all my helpful "crew" chiming in with all their ideas which turned into forebodings ("you could fall", "I'm not strong enough to catch you if you DO" and finally "I need to walk away from this because you're not listening to me!") was just too much for my weary mind to take. Bottom line: that which does not kill you makes you stronger....and at this point, I'm probably the strongest blob of a physical wreck in my entire neighborhood! Stay tuned for more!