Trashing the Crib Part 2

November, 2020

I blogged earlier about the various accessibility accouterments installed throughout the house. There are enough bars and ramps to keep a fully sugared five year old with a big wheel busy for hours.

Let’s substitute that fully sugared five year old with a pALS learning to ride a LazyBoy on Wheels. Let’s just say the crib could use a quarter ton of filler and a coat of paint to cover up my student driver errors.

Maneuvering through a tract home while sitting atop the 420 lb LazyBoy on Wheels with only a joy stick for guidance is guaranteed to wreck havoc on walls, cabinets, and anything else that had the misfortune to be in the way. Our wonderful remodeled interior soon looked like student housing. Fortunately the greatest damage was limited to those areas that posed the greatest challenges.

The first challenge for me and my caregivers was getting into the all important bedroom suite. The maneuver is easy to explain but difficult to execute. The process involves tilting the LazyBoy on Wheels forward to reduce its footprint to get it down the hallway and through the very tight left turn into the bedroom. The hope is that my spastic left foot doesn’t stiffen into an I-beam before negotiating it through the doorway. The exercise requires continually jerking the LazyBoy on Wheels back and forth to properly align it to enable its passage through the doorway. The jerking LazyBoy on Wheels, however, further unnerves my spastic left leg, causing a doorway blocking appendage. After a year of practice it remains a wonder that St. Laurel can get me into the bedroom every night. It is not a wonder that corner has more scrapes, cuts, and gashes than a rowdy seven year old in a dirt playground. And let’s not get into what I did to the doorway moulding when I was threading this particular needle myself.

The second challenge was to slalom through the entryway en route to the dining and kitchen area or the hallway. This challenge was met in the breach. I did manage to leave the pocket door molding intact save for a floor level crack which threatens to cleave said molding if you look at it the wrong way. As for the entrance to the hallway I’ll leave that to your imagination.

All in all the damage remains cosmetic although there is always tomorrow. Still the fact that the LazyBoy on Wheels is now under permanent control of my caregivers gives me hope that my wanton destruction of our crib has run its course.