Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Handicapped? Not at work...

  I was parked in a handicapped spot the other day in McDonald's parking lot. I had my handicapped placard hanging on the rear-view mirror in accordance to Virginia law. I happened to be driving a taxi at the time. A unmarked police officer pulled in front of my vehicle, and then backed up so that he had his driver's side window parallel to my hood. He rolled down his window and waved me over to his vehicle. I exited my car and using my cane (as always) I walked over to his vehicle. He told me that I can not park in a handicapped space. I pointed to my placard and showed him the handicapped ID card from the DMV that goes with it. He again stated that I can't park in a handicapped space. I pointed to my cane. I pointed out my dragging left leg. He said he didn't care about my excuses, I still can't park in a handicapped space. I again felt the need to inform him that I am handicapped. He said he didn't care, you can't be handicapped in a commercial vehicle. Mind you, I am driving a taxi, not a semi tractor-trailer. I asked him why not, seemed like a fair question. He told me that work vehicles can't be parked in handicapped spaces when working. What was interesting is that the placard on my dashboard was flipped to "Off Duty" indicating that I was not working at the time. I also use this vehicle as my personal vehicle. Didn't matter according to the parking Nazi, can't be handicapped at work.
  Now, if you have a vehicle that does not have any markings on it, that is your personal vehicle. You may park that vehicle in any legal parking space in this great state. If you have a handicapped placard, you may park in any handicapped space, and you may park in any metered parking space without paying the meter for up to 4 hours. However, no matter how cripple you are, it appears that you are not permitted to park legally in a cripple space if you use your vehicle for any type of work purpose.
  Due to this information, I  believe I have found the cure to MS...Go to work! You can't be cripple at work.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Move a little, hurt a lot

As you know from reading my blog, we have been in the process of moving for the last few weeks into our temporary house until the final move to South Dakota in June. As of last night, we have moved into the new house! By "moved in" I mean that the bed is set up and we were able to sleep here for the first night. Unfortunately, there is still much to finish.
Tomorrow morning we will get up early (which for me is around 10am) and head over to our storage unit to unload what we have already in the U-Haul truck before we head back to the old house and load more stuff into the truck and try to dispose of all the trash we have amassed over there since we live in the country and don't have regular trash service and cancelled our trash company at the beginning of January since we expected to be out of the house by then. Thankfully we have a burn barrel and will be turning most of the waste into ashes. This will include some of the old beat up wooden furniture that we have decided to retire. What we hope is that my body will be able to make it through another day of "power moving."
As of last night when we got to the new house and put the bed together, I found that my body was no longer willing to move. I laid upon the completed bed, and almost immediately every muscle in my body tightened up and decided that I should no longer move. I remained in this prone position for about 30 minutes before I painfully got off of the bed and headed to the bathroom to lay in the bathtub and hope that the steaming hot water relaxed my muscles long enough for me to be able to stand without much help and limp myself back into bed. I would say that the water helped about 50% whilst the extra Baclofen and Percocet did another 30%. Unfortunately, I learned that with MS, over exertion comes much quicker than it did in the past.
I discovered that even with a dolly to move most of the heavy things including many boxes, I start to feel the effects of the move much earlier than ever before. The last time we moved has over a year ago, and I felt it then, but not as badly as I did this time. I learned that my knees no longer absorb the pressure that they should and was reduced to very slow and painful movements of my lower joints once we arrived home for the night. I discovered that after a couple hours of moving stuff and taking what I felt were plentiful breaks during the process, the muscles in my entire left side that have been affected since day 1 of my MS experience stiffened and stopped working properly. Even today, I am still having lost of pain and difficulty moving even after 13 hours of sleep last night. This does not bode well for tomorrow.
Let's hope that tomorrow will be an easy day of finishing the move and we will finally be done. If it is anything like the other day I may find myself strapped to the dolly and being loaded onto the truck much like the cargo we are relocating. Moving around is hard enough, but "moving" with MS even to a smaller house with no deadly stairs is almost a type of torture. I just keep telling myself that this is my life, or something like it...