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I purchased a home before I was in a wheelchair.
And so I have a home built in the late 1940s. It was built in 1949 and
they did not build homes in the late 1940s that were built for
people in wheelchairs. Um...I am lucky enough to be working with vocation
rehabilitation right now to be doing some modifications that are making
the home more livable
and making things just easier for me to get around. And I think in looking
for an ideal living situation that's one of the things that is so important. Um...
you don't realize when you're trying to get around in a living space that is not
equipped for a wheelchair user, how much energy you waste and how much
more tired you are. How much less you can do in other aspects of your life.
Um...I had a any surgery in the beginning of January,
um... which ended up causing some,
it helped in some ways in decreasing spasticity, which is a portion of my condition.
And I have generalized dystonia which is um... it's kind of similar to parkinson's disease.
And so I have a lot of muscle spasms, spasticity that type of thing
but with the surgery that decreased the spasticity but made me more dependent on the wheelchair.
So I was able to get up and to walk a lot more in my home before the surgery
than I am now. Um...and
before they were going to let me come home from the rehabilitation hospital,
I was told basically that I was going to have to go into nursing home
because my house was not accessible and it was not safe for me to go home. And I had some,
two great friends that went to my house and they said the big stumbling block was the bathroom,
because in houses that are um...built in the timeframe that mine was,
which mine was built in 1949,
the doorways in my bathroom was about the size of a closet door I belive. It was
24 inches so getting a wheelchair in the door is just not possible.
I mean, I couldn't even get a walker through my door unless you put it sideways and
you have to side step which just doesn't work.
So I had two friends that came and took my bathroom door off, all the trim
around it so I could just barely get my wheelchair through the door and
scraping knuckles up the whole time
and um... lived that way from February until just
about two weeks ago. So this is November, so it's been that way for nearly a year.
Um.. just with a shower curtain for a bathroom door.
And so vocation rehabilitation is helping out a lot
with home modifications right now. They've been um...able to widen my bathroom door um...
so that I can actually get into it now without, you know, and
getting hurt or not being able to depending on the day.
Um...I now have a sliding pocket door
um..., which it slides completely into the wall so it's out-of-the-way,
which works great. I now have a wall-hung sink so that rather than
uh... one with a typical lavoratory that has the drawers and everything
underneath it. So I can now get in front of
the sink with my legs underneath it and they dropped the medicine cabinet down so
I can actually see what i'm doing. And um...
they're putting, they're still in the process of doing some things. But uh...
I have, they're adding additional grab bars
um... in the bathroom to help with getting on and off the toilet and out of the bathtub.
Um...they suggested a roll-in shower but I'm hoping to um...either
foster to adopt or to adopt a child at some point in the
fairly near future and felt that a bathtub was necessary.
And so we decided to keep that feature. They have added a stair lift so
I can now get to my basement to do laundry, which was always um...
really dangerous. I would have to do kind of like what um...
little kids do when they're first learning to walk, where you would just
kind of sit and scoot up and down the stairs,
which trying to do that with a laundry basket, is not real great.
Um... so a lot of times, you know, my clothes would end up downstairs and it's like you
bring up an outfit or two at a time.
And I don't have to do that anymore and it's just a lot safer.
Um...they're lowering my
kitchen cabinets, which were very, very tall and I will actually be able to reach my
kitchen sink now
without having to lean against things.
And I will have an um...oven that has all the controls in front.
Because with my other one, I was having to reach across hot burners with my arm almost touching
the burners in order to turn the oven on and off.
And I have an automatic door opener now, also which is amazing. It's like I have
a key fob on my keychain. That I just press a button and the door unlocks itself
and will open to let me in, which is just fantastic.
I think as far as making the community livable, the best things are
when you can have locations that have accessible sidewalks
that are level. Um... I know in many cases they will
put the sidewalks at a slant, which helps with water runoff,
but when you're in a wheelchair it makes you off balance so one of your
arms has to work a lot harder than the other. And it's just takes a lot
of additional energy. Um...having um...the curb ramps in accessible places uh...there's
a few places that I go that you'll have
the building that you need to go to, you have to go down three buildings before you
can get up onto the sidewalk. So it's just having,
just places to where you can even get to where you need to go.