Bill: p.s. on Dec 27 car trip

I forgot to mention we had a bit of a struggle last week getting back into the car after OT. The car was in a spot with a slight uphill slope from the back-to-front of the car -- I mean, really slight, but noticeable. Bill's selected seat was to be the rear passenger-side seat. There was also a slight tilt downhill from the passenger side to driver's side. So when Bill got out of the wheelchair and took a bigger-than-I-expected step forward, he was right next to the car door. His next step needed to be backwards, with a little pivot, so he could sit in the seat before swiveling in.

Easy, right?

No. I've worked with mobility issues a lot, so let me try to break this down. When you have a mobility issue, you can't rely on the old muscle memory, so each motion has to be broken down and planned before executing. Oh, and you also don't trust everything to go smoothly, so the fear of falling freezes movement even more. 

So imagine you are near the car seat, your target, but not close enough. Your face is in the car door. You need to lean forward even more, feeling the downhill slope behind you. You need to put all of your weight on one foot or the other, and on the cane, so the other foot can move. Just for fun, take a fistful of blood pressure meds a half hour or so before you need to move, because having some light headedness kick in IS fun.

You guessed it, Bill's knees started to buckle. Ayn had the foresight, or instinct, to push his downward momentum toward the seat. At least he was mostly braced against the car instead of going to the concrete. (Please forgive me if it's cement rather than concrete. Can we just agree it's a very hard surface?) After resting a bit in this crouched/braced position, we were all able to push and pull until Bill was in his seat.

Chalk up another learning experience.