Scott Update - May 22, 2008

Other than the acquisition of Scott's wheelchair, nothing much to report; he's feeling a bit better but he's just as unsteady on his feet. The other night even supporting himself on both opposing walls of my narrow hallway, he went down. Fortunately he was close enough to one wall to lean against it as he fell so he did not get hurt.

Yesterday his grandparents took him to one of his appointments, and he has now seen the chiropractor twice, with his next visit tomorrow. They were there when I arrived home yesterday to await the delivery of the wheelchair. They were wonderful and did some cleanup and pruning of my front gardens and hauled away the debris we bagged since my trash company won't take it unless you subscribe to their lawn and garden debris pickup service.

We are researching via the Internet other possible causes for his condition.

Overall his mood has been good, but Monday night he was in tears thinking he might have a brain tumor or cancer, or something else that was horrible. Typical teenager attention span in the sense that he was told in the hospital and in his initial examination at the chiropractor that the MRI, CAT scan, and other tests he had showed it was none of these things. He was quite upset and his mood has his ups and downs. He feels guilty he is causing all this worry and work over him and I reaffirmed that he should not feel this way. It's not his fault and we are there for him.

Today he is going to try and sit in a class or two at school. This means that he and his wheelchair have to be taken there and picked up. In the Mustang this is quite interesting, when I picked him up at an appointment yesterday afternoon I had to fold the back seats down, and I had already emptied the trunk of everything except a can of fix a flat. With the size and weight and of the wheelchair and my bad back It still was quite the struggle to get the wheelchair in. Making a poor situation worse is that since the back seats are down I can only have myself, Scott, and the wheelchair in the car, there is no room for my daughter to sit and have a seat belt. For the first time since acquiring my beloved Mustang, which I have wanted since I was a teenager, I am regretting having chosen it as my vehicle.

At least when I removed the wheelchair, which came out far easier than it went in, I observed the placement of it in the trunk. I think I may have a way to place it in, using the reverse of the removal process I used yesterday.

The kids have no school tomorrow, so both will be home. I will be working from home in the afternoon.

Scott and the Mall

Scott asked if there was anyway we could get a wheel chair and take him to the mall Saturday. I checked online and the local mall does do wheelchair loaners so today around lunch time we headed over to the woodland mall. I pulled up to the door and slowly Danielle walked her brother to one of the benches right by the door while I parked the car. As I arrived at the bench Scott remarked it was starting to rain so I walked him inside and he and Danielle sat at one of the tables in the food court while I went to get a wheelchair.

The mall, while nice to loan these out for free also wins one of my "What a stupid thing to do!" awards because the information both is in the exact center of the mall, and equal distance down two corridors from any door in the mall. Hello! So you have to walk all the way in, get the wheelchair, and wheel it empty back to whatever door you came in, and when you are ready to go you get to do the opposite of this. Would it not have made sense to put the wheelchair and stroller loaners by one of the freaking doors? Anyway I got plenty of exercise wheeling Scott and the chair around. We had lunch at the food court, I some wings from Wing Heaven and Scott and Danielle food from the Chinese place.

While I finished my wings they said they would slowly start heading down towards the stores Scott wanted to go to, since it takes him awhile to roll the chair using the two big wheels which he wanted to do. I completed eating and headed after them, and when I hit the main corridor they were no where to be found. I called Scott's cell only to find they were a whole corridor past the information booth so I hurried down there and admonished them for being so far away. Scott blamed his sister saying she took control of the chair and wheeled him there. I used my mall gift card Mom and Dad had given me two Christmases past and bought two new books in the Deathlands series, some Archie double digests, and a book for Danielle. I have been saying I would take the card to the mall every time we went but awhile back I had put it in my wallet.

We got pretzels for a treat and headed to their Mom's house so they could pick up their items for the week.