Thank you, and an Update

Thank you to everyone for your kind words. Yes, we're doing better now. Yesterday Brian took a day off of work. He moved everything stored in the garage from one side of the garage to the other, and we added my first ramp. Now I can get from the house down to the garage all by myself. And also, now we can park my car on the far side of the garage from the door, so I have room to ramp down and still get to my car. What a huge improvement! I just realized I should be showing you a picture instead of describing something so complicated. Well, I'll have to get pics when all the work is done.

I guess you could say that it's simpler to be able to not need the wheelchair every minute of the day, but I wouldn't call it easier. It's a whole lot harder to walk a few steps for me than not to, but that's just life. The problem now is that I keep having to walk in our non-accessible places in our home, like upstairs, out to the garage, into the bathrooms, etc., when necessary, and it's completely wearing me out. Either that or I just sit still and don't do anything, which is what I have been doing most of the past 2 years. I'm too young to stop living, I need to keep going. If I go upstairs, I need Brian to lift my legs for me step by step to help me climb the stairs. He lifts the leg onto the next step, and I push up with my crutches to shift my center of gravity up, then we doing it again with the other leg. And once we get up there, I have to lay down and rest or take a nap. It's a huge waste of time and energy. So, the goal is to make the house accessible enough for me that I can still have enough energy to homeschool once school starts up again in about 1.5 months. So, that's my "deadline" to get it all done.

The, what I call a stair chair, is technically called a stair lift. I'm going to order it from this company: http://www.jamesonmedical.com/stair_lifts.htm. So, if you'd like to see what it looks like, you can go to that site. We're also going to order a 2nd wheelchair, so that one can always stay on the top floor. I've been fighting this inevitiblity for a while now, because those two things will be SO expensive. But, I'm just too exhausted without them to do anything, and that's no way to live if it can be helped. I talked with my Dad, with Brian's Dad, and with Brian, the three men in my life, two of whom (the Dads) can build anything and know a lot about house modifications, and all three of them said it's cheaper to do the stair lift and the 2nd wheelchair than to move to a one story house. So, as much as it costs, it's still the better way to go, I guess.

So, now that the garage ramp is in, we're spending the rest of this weekend on small house maintenance chores, partying tonight of course, and picking out all the details for the stair chair and the 2nd 'chair.

Speaking of which. She'll need a name. My crutches are Abby, or Abigail if they're falling and I can't catch them and need to use a stern voice with them, hehe. My chair now is Charlie, named by my sister Krysten. I'm thinking of maybe Ellie for the next one. I'll have to wait until I order it and then when it gets here, then I'll know which name to go with.

Have a great 4th of July!