The Help

I need help.

This quiet thought came to me as I was recently lying on my dining room floor with my head wedged between two pieces of furniture. I had fallen out of my wheelchair and my disability would not allow me to rescue myself from this very uncomfortable position.

Although it had been a while since I had been in such a predicament, it was very, very familiar. Before I gave in to the wheelchair, hard falls were a frequent occurrence. When my symptoms started affecting my limbs about six years ago, I stumbled along until I gave into a walker. Then I slowly made my way around by basically dragging my unresponsive legs behind me. I didn’t get anywhere quickly, and often I never made it at all because my legs just wouldn’t GO. And I would hit the floor or the ground and have to call for help.

The firemen and EMTs from Fire Station 18 started greeting me like an old friend.

Thus, the wheelchair and my introduction to the caregiving industry. This neediness was a hard and bitter pill to swallow. Help getting bathed and dressed, out of bed and into bed, getting meals, and going anywhere. My life no longer seems to be in any way my own. And how I managed to tumble out my 400-pound power wheelchair still baffles me.

I was rescued from my painful and undignified predicament on the dining room floor when my caregiver came in later that afternoon. I am lucky to have such skilled and caring people in my life nowadays. And there were no lasting injuries from that fall. But still, it hurts, emotionally and mentally. Scar tissue is starting to form. One of the ways this manifests itself is that you start pulling back from anything that’s going to be potentially painful or difficult. You just get tired of being a problem.

I get through it somehow. We all fall. Each of us is probably a problem for someone, whether we know it or not. We are a burden to this world.

I need help. So do we all.