Mobility

Originally, I was able to walk around just fine.  (Once I learned to walk, that is.  By ‘originally’ I didn’t mean since birth.  I think that probably would have freaked people out, if I just stood up and started walking around as soon as the umbilical cord was cut.) 

But, it didn’t take long for The Universe to decide that I was going to require mobility devices.  Like they were some kind of accessory that I just didn’t look fashionable enough without.  Thanks, Universe! 

Crutches

As a child and teen, I was unusually accident-prone.  (I remember that in the second grade, we were given an assignment to write a short autobiography.  I wrote mine and handed it in.  The teacher was amused by it.  Not because it was amusing in-and-of itself, but because the story that I told was basically just a catalog of the injuries I had sustained thus far in my short life.) 

As a result of this, my first ever mobility aid was a pair of crutches.  Just your standard classic hand-and-armpit style adjustable-height crutches. 

For my first few sprained ankles (or pulled muscles, or whatever various impairments to my walking that happened), I used a pair of metal crutches rented from either the doctor’s office or the local pharmacy.  But pretty soon my parents just broke down and bought a pair of (most likely second hand) wooden crutches for me. 

The Cane

I got sick with what would eventually be diagnosed as CFS in the fall of 1988.  As a result of which, I started using a cane in the early 90s.  Primarily for balance issues.  (At the time, I was fairly new to morbid obesity, and thus had not yet destroyed my right knee by the simple act of walking around on it.) 

Sometimes I’d be walking along and would just suddenly get dizzy and fall right over.  The cane helped keep that from happening.  (Usually.  Well, sometimes anyway.) 

But eventually, the slow destruction of my knee did begin, and I started using the cane to transfer impact and load weight from my leg to my arm as the knee began to hurt more and more. 

As time went on and the knee got worse, the cane became more important.  The earlier dizziness is something that I learned to cope with and to some degree counteract.  But there came a time where my knee would occasionally give way or buckle on me, and I’d go down hard, as if I was still too dizzy to stand. 

I was brave enough to wander around inside my own home without gripping the cane handle, but out and about?  When out and about, I always used a cane. 

Variety

But I didn’t end up just using a cane.  No, I ended up using a lot of canes.  Not long after I started putting weight on the cane when I walked, I ended up breaking it. 

Dad got me a replacement cane – a huge, dense, and very heavy wooden monstrosity with the classic curved handle.  Unfortunately, even pre-arthritis, using a curved handled cane made my hand cramp up.  I needed a cane with a straight handle, perpendicular to the shaft of the cane, like my now broken one had. 

So, I went out and bought myself a new cane.  Also wooden, but with a usable handle.  Now I had two canes.  Two canes was probably enough, wouldn’t you think?  Hmm. 

Yeah, well, apparently not.  Because people started bringing me canes.  There was one point where I must have had over a dozen of them.  Metal canes.  Wooden canes.  Foldable canes.  Canes with multiple angled tips on the bottom.  I had one cane which had been harvested from the very stout branch of a tree.  Another wooden cane which had been carved to look like a snake. 

I would sometimes ask Santa (or whoever) to get me a fancy skull-topped walking stick.  Ooh, or a sword cane!  But sadly, come Christmas they never seemed to appear beneath the tree. 

In addition to owning a variety of canes, I also began to discover a variety of uses for them.  A cane works very well as a mid-distance button pusher, much like the finglonger.  (If you didn’t get that reference, you’re not watching enough Futurama.)  Useful when you can’t locate the remote control. 

If you’re holding the cane by the bottom, you can use the handle to gently tap the shoulder of someone not paying attention to you.  (It’s rude to tap them with the same end that touches the ground.)  Or, if you are gripping the cane by the handle and you don’t care about niceties, you can also use it as a poking device. 

A cane is also always useful as an impromptu reaching mechanism.  Knock something down off of a high shelf, or drag something toward you across the floor.  A cane has plenty of uses. 

Heavy Duty

Did you know that most canes come with a maximum weight recommendation?  I was surprised when I first learned this (back in the late 90s / early 00s), but now it seems like it should be obvious.  Especially here in America where weight gain seems like just another part of our national culture. 

And, not surprisingly, heavy duty almost always means heavy expensive.  But I’d rather pay the extra for the durability my weight requires than risk the possibility (okay, probability) that whatever it is that I’m using is going to break and leave me laying on the ground. 

So anytime I’m searching for mobility devices (among other things) online, I make sure to include the words heavy duty in the search. 

Medicare vs. Mobility

Back when I was still living in my brother’s basement in Silverton, I started looking into some of the more expensive mobility devices (like a mobility scooter, for example) based on the premise that Medicare would probably pay for most of it. 

That’s when I discovered that Medicare will only pay toward a mobility device if it is to be used primarily inside the home.  Which I find really weird.  They’ll help you move around inside your home, but don’t offer any help if your disability actually traps you there.  Huh. 

There was one member of my extended medical care team at the time who suggested simply telling Medicare it was for use inside the home, but then using it to get around town.  But part of the Medicare process involves an actual inspection of the home to ensure that the device is suitable for use there.  And at the time, my brother’s basement was not mobility device friendly. 

Earlier this year, I started looking into the possibility of getting a heavy duty mobility scooter.  But those things are more expensive than I can pay for on my own, and there’s no way that my apartment would get okayed for a Medicare-supplied scooter.  Not enough room to drive the thing around. 

Plus, Medicare only pays a maximum of 80%.  So for something like the mobility scooter I had my eye on, I would still end up paying more than $600 out of pocket.  And my pockets just aren’t that deep. 

The Rollator

Halfway through the 2016 Bricks Cascade LEGO convention, my knee went from very, very bad to what I can only think to describe as completely shithouse.  The last half of that convention was absolute Hell for me, trying to limp around on a knee that had just completely redefined what joint pain was to me. 

So, of course, a year later I was at Bricks Cascade again, not having had any real changes made to my situation.  Yes, I had a bottle of pain pills in my pocket that the doctor prescribed when he compared the amount of walking I was about to do with my x-rays.  But I was still in way too much pain, and all I could think was, “Coming here was a mistake.” 

By time Bricks Cascade 2018 rolled around, I had gotten at least a little bit smarter.  A month or so before the convention, I purchased a heavy-duty rollator.  500 lb weight capacity, reinforced 8 inch wheels, and an extra wide seat to fit my fat ass. 

Two handles and four wheels provided a much better walking experience than just the cane did.  Not to mention having the ability to turn the thing around and have a seat whenever I needed to take a rest as opposed to having to try and remain upright until I reached the next available bench was a life saver. 

Nowadays, the rollator goes pretty much everywhere I do.  Sure, most of the places I go are just medical appointments, but it’s turning out to be well worth the investment. 

The Chair

When I was first writing up the subheadings for this post, I debated whether or not to include the computer chair.  But it does have wheels, and gets me from the computer to the refrigerator and back without me having to get up.  That counts as mobility, doesn’t it? 

It probably helps to understand that for the first three and a half years here in the apartment, the place I sat when working at the computer was this monolithic wooden beast of a chair.  No padding.  And absolutely no notion of mobility.  I couldn’t even scoot the thing without first getting up off of it. 

(And before that?  When I was still living in my brother’s basement?  My computer chair back then started out its life as a relatively structurally sound aluminum chair.  But eventually the back broke off, rendering it more-or-less a four legged stool.  And again, that was my chair for years.  Years in which I lived in near-constant fear of falling over backwards.) 

So in 2020/2021 when those magical stimulus checks started appearing, I took some of that money and bought myself a big and tall office chair with a wide seat and a maximum weight capacity of 500 lbs.  And before even sitting in it, I replaced its cheap plastic wheels with heavy duty steel and rubber wheels, that had a maximum weight capacity of a whopping 650 lbs. 

Just being able to swivel the seat around makes this chair so very much better than my old one.  But wheels?  That little bit of travel that I can do in the chair?  Priceless. 

The (Rental) Mobility Scooter

As nice as having the rollator to take to LEGO conventions has been, the situation could be even nicer.  Walking around still causes knee pain, even if it’s a lesser amount than it would be with just the cane.  Plus, my lungs (ravaged by lifelong asthma and two pulmonary embolisms) aren’t big fans of me doing a lot of walking, either. 

To that end, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a reasonably local place that rents heavy duty mobility scooters.  And about a month before the last convention, I finally found one.  R&J Mobility in Portland (also with offices in Salem and Medford).  Not only were they able to rent me a scooter, but they also delivered it to my hotel the night before the convention started.  (And picked it back up from the hotel the morning after it ended.) 

So, my friend Kyle picks me up on Thursday morning to take me to Portland for the con and drops me off at my hotel.  I tell them who I am and what should be waiting for me, and they lead me to a storage room right off of the lobby.  And there it is.  The conveyance of my dreams.  I wish I’d thought to get pictures of it. 

After checking in and dropping off my luggage in the room, I went to the convention center.  And I mean directly to the convention center.  No having to stop half a dozen times to rest.  Compared to my typical on-foot speed, I got there fast. 

Once in the convention center, it was another comparatively fast trip to the exhibition hall.  Keep in mind, a year previous making these treks on foot made it feel like I was going to die.  But on the mobility scooter?  Zoom.  No pain, no breathing issues, no undue exhaustion, just zoom. 

I think I enjoyed that con more than all of the other LEGO conventions I’ve attended put together.  I got to see all of the MOCs.  I got to attend all of the meetings and presentations that I wanted to.  Twice I even went back to my hotel room for a midday sandwich break.  It turned out to be a legitimate game changer for me. 

And I didn’t even run anybody over. 

The Electric Wheelchair

Once the convention was over and I was back home again, I started daydreaming about actually owning a mobility scooter.  But, as I indicated earlier.  Out of my price range.  And no room to store it in the apartment unless I got rid of a bunch of furniture. 

However… sometime in early-to-mid August of this year, somebody on a CFS group I follow posted a link that caught my eye.  (Along with an apology for posting it on what was the last day of the sale, having only discovered it themselves that morning.)  The link in question was to a heavy duty folding electric wheelchair that was on sale. 

I’ve discovered that when you’re reading wheelchair advertisements, it’s incredibly rare to find ‘heavy-duty’, ‘folding’, and ‘electric’ all in the same description. 

So, after a time-condensed version of careful consideration, I decided that I must have it.  It wasn’t the perfect product for my needs, but the price more than made up for what few problems I saw.  Maximum weight capacity is 395, which is fine just as long as my next medication change doesn’t make me bulk up again.  (I’m currently at 357.)  And the seat is narrower than I’d like.  But I can live with it.  

 

It was delivered late last week, and I’ve had it out in the apartment’s parking lot for a test drive.  Product reviews said that you need to get some practice in with it before you actually go anywhere, and they weren’t kidding.  So far it seems to consider input from the armrest mounted joystick as casual suggestions rather than actual commands.  But I’ll get used to it. 

 

Freedom!

My schedule for the next couple of weeks is pretty well packed.  I’ve got an eye doctor appointment and an appointment to get bloodwork done.  I’ve also got to spend some time building for BrickCon, and then at the end of the month, there’s the con itself.  That will be the real trial for the wheelchair. 

But after the con?  That’s when I get to explore some new found freedom.  I never go anywhere.  And the reason for that is because the closest bus stop to my apartment is still too far for me to walk to on my bad knee, even with the rollator.  But with an electric wheelchair?  Should be easy. 

Once I hit the bus stop, I can pretty much go anywhere in Salem.  And beyond.  Take the Salem bus to Wilsonville then on to Portland.  Or Salem to Woodburn to Canby (home of the flagship Bricks and Minifigs location.)  I can get to Tigard, home of the LEGO Store in the Washington Square Mall.  If I had a stake, I could get to Spirit Mountain Casino in Grand Ronde. 

To paraphrase Doctor Seuss:  Oh, the places I’ll be able to go!