Power Chair Fun & Games 2

I cannot believe it! I got stuck in my wheelchair again! And so soon after my last wheelchair ‘adventure’. This time it was my own fault, and it was really funny! I was laughing at myself all the way through it.

The gardeners were here yesterday, including raking, the area beside my building where I have my radio antenna wire laying on the ground. So I went outside to check it. I do this almost daily, but from the sidewalk.

Today, I could see that the gardeners had messed it up, they had draped it in a tangle over a bush and it was very visible.

Since I had one of my reachers with me, I went up on the grassy area, no easy task, and something I try not to do, as the area is full of lumpy surface tree roots that mostly I can not see. But I’ve done it before, when I have had to, and saw no problem with doing it again.

Except that this time I could not quite reach the antenna wire with my reacher. I was just inches away! I went forward just a a bit. Nope, the wire was STILL just out of my reach. I inched forward just a little more! Success was mine, I could grab the wire with my reacher. I worked it back down to the ground, behind the bush, where the apartment management would not easily see it.

But now I was fully between the bushes, which quickly scratched up my legs and got entangled in the spokes of my tires. When I got the thick branches unentangled from my spokes, and tried to back out, the tires of my chair just spun.

Without realizing it, by inching forward, I had gone into the sand. My tires do not do ice, mud, wet grass, or soft sand! (Now this sand is usually hard packed, I have even done this once before, but the gardeners had ‘raked’ it heavily, so that NOW, it was soft and dry.)

I tried every way I could to get unstuck and back on the grass. I tried slow and fast, and going in all different directions. I rocked it; I tried turning around. It was a no go. I was stuck, and was just getting ‘stucker’ by the minute.

Worse yet, my efforts had, by now put me absolutely up against the building! The metal feet of my wheel chair were actually jammed up against the outer wall of my own apartment.

It was then that I reached for my cell phone to call management or even 911 if I had to sit there long enough, only to realize that IT WAS NOT THERE! Nor was my cordless phone that I often carry in a side pocket of the chair.

I looked around, as best I could through the bushes, and there was no one it sight. It was then I realized I could be sitting there staring at the wall of my building a long time before someone came by. And I started laughing, I could not help it. It was so stupid it was funny!

Luckily, it was middle afternoon, and people would start coming home and parking eventually. I planned to holler, loud and clear, at the first person that appeared. I just hoped I would be heard, sitting there facing the building and between the bushes. It was then that I first got a little scared. Still, it was funny, here was this fat old woman sitting up against the wall, stuck in her wheelchair, giggling. Whomever I could get to help me would probably call the men in the white jackets!

Sure enough, just a few minutes later, a car pulled in and parked on the other side of the lot. I heard it, and started calling for help. She heard me, though she told me later that she could not see me! She, an unknown neighbor who lived in the next building, came over to investigate, and asked if I needed help.

"Ohhhh yesss," I said.

I sent her to get someone to help her, and a few minutes later, she came back with still another unknown neighbor, a young man.

I instructed them how to switch the wheelchair to manual operation. The woman helped me stand up against the building (I did not put my weight on my bad ankle), she ‘balanced me’ as I held on to a window frame. At which point the man was able to pull my chair back just inches (probably less than 6!), to get the big middle wheels on the grass. They then helped me to the chair, and watched carefully as I made my way back to the sidewalk.

I went back inside my apartment, grateful to be there, more than a little embarrassed, and upset with still another wheelchair adventure ‘under my belt’.

The thing is, I want to ‘do for myself!’ I do not want to wait for someone else to do things for me! I HATE asking people for things (I really do). However, a lesson has been learned. I will not go outside again without a phone! And the next time I get a cell phone, I will make sure I get TWO phones on the same line, so one can just live on the wheelchair. I tend to put it in my waist pack, then forget to take it out and put it back on the wheelchair, and I never wear the waist pack around the apartment.

And next time, the wire antenna will just have to stay tangled and in plain sight till I can find someone who will fix it for me. Sigh...