The other day, one of my fellow patient friends from Lyndhurst asked me to come to his house for Christmas dinner. His name is Ted. Needless to say, when you're in a wheelchair, going anywhere can be a logistical nightmare. And Uxbridge isn't across the street. So the main issue was transportation and if I could solve that, I would go. Our mutual friend and fellow patient Godfrey called me on Saturday and asked if I wanted to go to Uxbridge with him. I said I would get back to him. After confirming a couple of things with Ted, I called Godfrey back and told him what we were going to do and that I was going. Of course one of the big problems is I can't get the power chair into a car and I don't have a backup manual chair. There would be one other hurdle once I got to the house and I will explain that in a moment. Let's just say I did a couple of things I hadn't done before.
Godfrey and his girlfriend Tara arrived at my place at 2PM. I went down to Godfrey's car in my chair and transferred into the front seat of the car. I hadn't done that before but it was no big deal. Godfrey took my chair up to my apartment and locked up. So what am I going to do when I get to Ted's house? First, they have a chair lift from the garage to the main floor of the house. Second, Ted has a couple of wheelchairs that I can borrow while I'm there. So we're off to Uxbridge. It's a long trip but traffic was pretty good. The other problem was that there are 13 steps going from the main floor down to Ted's family room. He was very concerned about that because he knows I can't walk but he has a cane and a walker. Just because I haven't navigated stairs doesn't mean I can't do it. I have walked with canes and a walker so I felt that if I was careful, I would be OK. So with everyone watching me like a hawk, I went down the stairs very slowly with one hand on the bannister and the other with a cane. It went very well and everyone, including myself, was very relieved. I used the walker to get to the sofa in the family room. Obviously once I did that, I was confident about doing it again and I knew I could do it in the first place anyway. You have to be that way or you'll never do anything. We went back upstairs for traditional Christmas dinner with turkey and everything. The dinner was great and then we went back downstairs to watch one of Godfrey's DVDs.
When it was time to leave, it was snowing heavily in Uxbridge. Visibility was poor so Godfrey had to be extra cautious on the road back to the highway. There was snow and heavy traffic on Hwy. 401 but there was no snow in the city. It was just raining a bit. Godfrey went up to my apartment to get my chair and I transferred out of the car into the chair. So a successful but complicated road trip. Many thanks to Godfrey for his help and I look forward to our future business dealings. And special thanks to Ted and his family for their hospitality to all of us. We all enjoyed ourselves and we greatly appreciated the invitation. It meant a lot to us.
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