Thursday, May 14, 2009

This evening Denise returns from her two-week course in Toronto! I survived which is actually pretty amazing everything considered. I received help in the morning to get out of bed and in the evening to get into bed one morning I even called on a neighbor who was kind enough to lend me a hand for a few minutes. Normally my usual schedule is in bed at 10 PM and up at 6:30 AM to have a coffee, breakfast and spend some time with Denise before she leaves for work. When you must depend on others you must abide by their schedule and yours takes a backseat, on some evenings I was in bed at 8:45 PM and for the morning the worst-case scenario was getting up at 10:30 AM now that's over 12 hours in bed and quite frankly it drove me nuts which is when I called on my neighbor.

The two weeks were quite interesting and fairly expensive in that we had purchased a ViewSonic television set for the bedroom prior to Denise leaving so if I happened to be in bed early I'd have something to watch. Well there were problems with the set and although I could not return it as Denise had paid for it with her credit card I could not see myself spending two weeks without something to do especially if I was to spend 12 hours in bed. So off I went and purchased a Panasonic 26 inch flatscreen LCD television which is very nice however I wonder how much use it will get upon her return, we may just end up bringing both of them back.
On the Thursday my computer screen went black, nothing to do but make another trip this time to Best Buy where I purchased a 22 inch Samsung flatscreen blah blah blah.

I was lucky to have the Van it made traveling to the mall back and forth quite easy. One day I swear I must've scared a lady right out of her mind, she honked her horn at me since I was taking up more than one handicapped parking space leaving what I thought was needed to deploy the ramp located on the side of the vehicle. Even though it was tight she decided there was enough room to park beside the van. She parked rather abruptly looking at me as if to say "what the hell is he doing taking two spaces."
I yelled at her from the top of my lungs over and over again and it's only when she noticed the ramp was being deployed onto her vehicle did she jump into action and get the hell out of the parking sot. It was quite funny actually the look on her face was sheer terror and panic.
The ramp has a feature which causes it to retract should it come into contact with an object, it would have been interesting to see how much damage would have been inflicted on her vehicle before the ramp went into reverse, unfortunately I will have to wait until another time before finding out. If you have a disabled parking sticker and who doesn't these days be careful if you're parking beside a Van as there may be a reason why it's taking up more than the normal allotted space. Oddly enough most handicapped parking spaces are meant for people with mobility? There are not that many wide enough to accept a Van with a ramp. Other than that no problems with the van, things went rather well attended our MS luncheon and went to eat at our local restaurant. The waitress at our local restaurant was somewhat surprised when I showed up alone.

I'd like to thank my neighbors who provided much-needed support in terms of making sure I was fine and even inviting me on several occasions to share dinner with them. Something that was definitely not necessary yet certainly appreciated. Tanks also to Guy who called to see if I wanted a coffee, not a big thing you may say yet when your alone having someone come over with a coffee or heaven forbid inviting you out for one makes the time go by quickly not to mention spending less time in isolation with good company. In fact the isolation and lack of contact with others was definitely the most difficult aspect of the two weeks she was away.

If I were to total the number of calls received apart from those from my spouse I'd say I received 3 to 4 calls, not many over a two-week period.

All in all it was an experience I learned in the process my limitations and was able to appreciate the countless number of things Denise does for me on a daily basis which Iunfortunately had taken for granted.