Nyel, Ready to Roll (Photo by Tucker)

Personal mobility doesn’t seem like much until you don’t have it. Just another of the many gifts we take for granted. In fact, I seem to recall that taking care of infants before they become mobile is often looked back upon as a blessing by mothers of toddlers. However, when immobility strikes a six-foot-two-well-filled-out-seventy-year-old, no one is counting blessings, believe me.

Of course, in this case, it’s not so much that the patient is immobile as that he is under doctor’s orders not to engage the muscles of his left leg. Period. So, in some ways, it’s the same thing. Certainly he has been non-ambulatory. Until yesterday. We managed to muscle him into a wheelchair and he wheeled himself into the library to enjoy the Friday Night Gathering from a sitting position. Yay!

After the last visitor left and we got him back into his “Temporary Hospital Room” he elected to stay in the wheelchair for a bit longer. We watched a few TV programs and when I began to fall asleep it became apparent that we’d better try to get him back into bed before the possibility of assistance from me became moot.

It turned out to be one of those processes that was easier done than undone. The spiffy new transfer board that the Kiwanis representative brought yesterday worked great getting him into the chair; not so much getting him out.     “That’s okay,” said ever-optimistic Nyel. “I’ll use the trapeze to help get me back in bed.”

Neither of us gave thought to the fact that said trapeze is not meant to work semi-sideways. Nyel’s weight pulled it askew and toward him in a very scary manner – an almost disaster for sure. Quickly we abandoned that method and I think pure adrenalin (at least on my part) got him resituated safely.

I feel just fine about leaving the patient in bed for the remaining nine-and-a-half weeks (weenie that I am) but already I’m hearing the wheelchair word… It must be a guy thing, this tempting the fates! I hope the mobility muse shows herself soon.