Bruises

Bruises

I’ve previously covered that the definition of “to bruise easily” is finding a bruise on your body and not remembering how you got it. For over a week my carers have been pointing out this bruise on my left arm. And I recall exactly how it happened. This is from when I took on a fence while out on my scooter, it’s still standing but so am I.

I have a tendency to take the High Street to go out on HellOnWheels to do some Hunter/Gathering at times to help get ahead of what I need to achieve with my carer on a Friday and to be a little creative, take a break from the High Street, I take some smaller side streets to cut through the smaller streets, on this particular day I encountered a shopping trolley someone had thoughtfully left on the footpath leaning against a tree. I imagined I could fit through the gap. I was wrong.

I reversed, got off my scooter then pushed the trolley onto the road where a driver could curse the universe later. I continued home.

Since then, when questioned by my carers, I respond, “I took on a fence! The fucking thing is still standing!”

Tuesday

Tuesday

Had a crazy Tuesday this week. Now it’s Friday and I’m sitting at my fave café for what has become my new normal day here to lunch and write. It’s the Covid normal.

In my early days of diagnosis, I felt the need to explain my life was less Brain Injury and more normal and my first specialist explained I was a high functioning ABI.

So, Tuesday was a bit more crazy than usual. This is probably a good example of me being high functioning. Keep in mind, Helen is not a morning person.

9:15am – Usual carer arrives for Personal Care. She does all her chores and I do mine.

I make breakfast and sit to eat. (Slam down my entrée of pills)

Turn my phone on. It starts, the bells and whistles, texts and calls and messages. I don’t know why I need to go off grid on the weekend.

I call and negotiate with my young John to get me to my first of two appointments. He can squeeze me in.

11.45am – I’m meeting my Neuro Physio. He sits on the floor trying to stretch out my left calf and front ligaments.

I have been diagnosed with a clunky ankle. It’s an official medical term. It’s causing and adding to my knee replacement one day. It’s already nice and crunchy! (My knee)

So, he’s doing him. I’m doing me. I’m checking texts, sending texts, then I’m required to stand favoring my left side and sit, twist my upper body towards my left to help my leg and foot do leg and foot. 

To be clear, all this teases my brain. It’s not super fun, because my right-side brain is saying “you want to do what? Get firetrucked!” (Trying not to swear!).

And I’m dealing with one of my two agencies to fill a shift, the following day on the Wednesday.

It’s a 6-hour shift where I get escorted out, I do the things, we have lunch either out or at home and I set them chores while I scooter out to other appointments, they don’t need to take me to. It’s also when I fit other things in where I need muscles and things that I can do by myself or on P.T.

It’s a 6-hour shift. The texts from my agency go back and forth. Eventually, I’m offered 3 hours which I later describe as like putting a band aid on a bullet wound. It’s a great image, isn’t it?

I was responding that I could offer their shift to my other agency, as in the whole shift 6 hours. What pretty band aids on either side of that 3 hour. I need the whole 6 hours.

I mention via text, I’m in the middle of something and I need to be present in my appointments, but then I get a rather long shitty text stating they had spent 4 hours messaging other carers and clients to find me someone. It sounds like they think I’m ungrateful. The grumpy text ends with an apology for the text. I am now getting busy – this is eight days after I started.

Hopefully I can do it justice. But otherwise, could be, I didn’t get to read her whole message. I got the gist and immediately texted my other agency and if the person was not in the office, I rang them directly. 

When I rang, I could even interpret the pause and inner office convo that happened in the background. A carer they have been wanting to send me for some time, they were just waiting on an NDIS checklist.

I confess it’s been two weeks since that fateful day. So, while this may not flow seamlessly from the previous post, I hope you can keep up?

So, I text the agency who is choosing to do their job the hard way, that in the middle of two appointments I need to be actively present at. I’ll get back to them.

It does already look like I’m covering the following days shift myself another way. I flick a text to my other agency. In case that staff member wasn’t in the office that day, I quickly call.

“What’s that?” I’m on the phone while my Occupational Therapist, (OT) who I’m just meeting for the first time is with me. “No, I told her she could absolutely go pee.” Respectfully, that makes us friends for life.

I call the agency and I can tell exactly the conversation that’s happening in their office.

“Oh, send X, Y, Z!”

“Is that Helen? Just fill that shift!”

There is no better motivation than me missing a specialist appointment because their afterhours staff member fucked up my Monday morning. My Botox appointment was rescheduled for two months further away. Botox keeps my left toes from curling (I know. What?). Yes! Botox in my leg.

Anyway, yes. The NDIA survey has been completed and X, Y, Z can cover my Wednesday shifts until my other agency can cover it again.

After my OT appointment, I head out and call my Heidelberg taxi driver. Young John is best at this time and so is Sean! 

I hoof it to my far local pide dealer. Pide is not code for anything. It’s just where I get my vegie pide from. Another taxi driver has arranged that I can wait around the corner to make life easier. 

On the drive home (10-15 mins) I text the first agency. I confess I was pretty grumpy earlier and wished to call my support coordinator to growl at the agency because I just didn’t have the bandwidth to give the polite diplomatic response.

Yet, I messaged something along the lines of, ‘I appreciate how hard it is to fill shifts when my regulars are away or don’t have a weekend. Then something that I genuinely did appreciate her efforts. Despite that, rather than ring me first to ask if she could wriggle things so she could cover three of the six hours of my shift. Would it be enough?

Sometimes it is but this particular day, I had placed other things in around and in between the appointments that required wheels and muscle.

I did all of this with a migraine.

So, that shift was moved for a month or so to another agency. 

The following Tuesday I received a message asking if I expected them to cover my Wednesday. I had to remind them I’d moved it temporarily. This is what happens when someone tries to cover a bullet wound with a band aid.

Great Adventure

Great Adventure

I always love a reason to get out on hellonwheels, my name for my mobility scooter. It’s also a great way for me to connect with people and change people’s idea of what disability looks like.

The adventure on this particular day, was to get to a dental appointment. I wanted to park my scooter inside but not in the waiting area, in anyone’s way, there is a small vestibule with two automated doors to navigate. So, I got a spot I thought was out of the way. Then I stepped back to assess and then saw this, can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

I decided it was still the best place for it. I stopped to mention it to the Covid Nazi just inside the entrance. She was making sure to check everyone in, take temperatures and quiz everyone on the likelihood they could have Covid. Don’t take my Nazi comment the wrong way, it is what it is and I still have not returned from overseas since 1994. Stop asking! It’s really starting to grate.

Anyway, I digress, I mentioned my parking location and suggested if firemen were to attend, they could pick up my scooter to move it out of their way. She said she thought it would be fine but I had to correct myself. “If they are *Hot* Firemen. Come and get me and have them move me on the scooter out of the way” Yes! It’s inappropriate but who smiled while reading that? She smiled, I got to tell her about my blog and I like to think it made her day.

Today’s Lunch – 22nd January 2020

Today’s Lunch

Good Mental Health Day

Want to keep it simple today. All the effort to have more time for writing, but so far, a week worth mentioning.

Monday, a day of public transport, a tram, a walk, a train and another train then a tram. Went South-Side which I do rarely these days. Tuesday seemed to be bill day, I paid four, including my scooter insurance and I went out on my scooter. You would be surprised how many people jump out of my way as if I intend to mow them down. About as many as those that dawdle all over the footpath taking up every inch of the available space. Those that choose to paste themselves to shopfronts as if that would stop me if I chose to collect some large hood ornaments? I mentioned they had nothing to worry about and my insurance was up to date! It’s the little things in life!

So today, after some extra chores, had to get a box of goodies and a Christmas present to Natalie in Collingwood and trade her my new shoes she mulled for me from Monday.

A regular Wednesday lunch the chicken turmeric salad with medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers

H

Happy

Happy

Sometimes the littlest things make me so very happy. Not everything in my life is all hunky-dory. I’m still trying to encourage family to assist me to buy a clothes dryer and that is a monumental fucking nightmare. So, today on my scooter ride down to lunch, I did a little scooter stalking.

That’s where I scooter behind someone walking rather slowly along the footpath, oblivious to anyone else around them. I just pick my time to open ‘it’ up and overtake them and by the time I get to a major intersection close to where I’m going, I’m waiting at the lights and I spy someone I knew from the DAC (Disability Advisory Committee) opposite me and I give him a big cheesy smile and a wave if there is time.

I sometimes imagine that when I see people, I know who I have a history of friendship with and can have a conversation with a few words and facial expressions. I encountered Young John at this intersection and he called out to me that I was making him late and he would call my mother. So, I imagine to others who think all people on mobility scooters or people with disabilities cry into their cups of tea all the time, can’t smile (sometimes) or laugh or be happy.

Sure, it’s harder, it’s not as often, but when I laugh or smile, it’s contagious.

Catch some happy!

Today’s Lunch – 4th July 2018

Today’s Lunch

Good Mental Health Day

Now, to share. Yesterday I had a little adventure out on Hellonwheels in my local neighbourhood. It’s already a rarity at this time of the year as it’s winter here in Melbourne. We are due a dry winter which sounds strange, but to make up for it, it will be bitterly cold. But I had a parcel to collect from the post office and I couldn’t carry it. So Hellonwheels it was, I layered up and off I went!

I didn’t get far when I literally ran into a woman. Now, the only appropriate response is to be genuine when asking how they are. Just saying. Sell it! Make it sound real! She said in a child-like voice that it had really hurt! I bet it had. It’s what you get when you stop walking in the middle of the footpath without having any awareness of who or what is around you. I had had my head turned slightly too far to my right so she had been in my blind spot on my left, but no I did not tell her that. It is my least favourite thing yet to run into someone on my scooter even if they deserved it.
I made the effort to scooter to one of the food truck locations, I haven’t been to any of them however this mural…………..

My carer tells me there is a neat ‘hack’ online or was where you would google his name to be given a message that “you don’t find Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris finds you!” This is why it’s good to have some ‘younger fear’ people around. This carer keeps getting mistaken as my child lately. She’s 24, she teases me that I’m really old. Like 60. Um? I’m 45 and 60 isn’t old but I feel old already!

On my scooter ride home, I dropped in on Wilbur but left it too late to snap a photo and here are some cool snaps I took on my way home. My council district is very good to encourage and commission artists to do murals. It keeps tagging and graffiti to a minimum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And despite only being out for 2 hours on my scooter in winter, my face and ears and my left hand were freezing, although my hand is always freezing, still counts. Don’t know if anyone else has this problem however coffee doesn’t help keep me awake! Anyone? Sometimes coffee and a kip? Best sleep ever. Just saying I think it’s my Italian blood. There was that time once working in clubs I had two coffees overnight and when I was in bed trying to sleep hours later my heart was racing. Also, didn’t help I had to get up early and get to the other side of town for my friend’s brothers 21st by midday. Seriously, those were the days. The music at that party was louder than the clubs I worked at and when I inquired the source of the music since it wasn’t coming from inside the house I was informed it was coming from the mum’s car! Outside, in the driveway with the boot up, with all the flashing lights of any 80’s disco. God help us all! I live on that side of town now, where were we?

After that little trip down memory lane and to the point of today’s post?

Today’s offering, it’s a return to the Arancini. A pumpkin and spinach with the side-salad. Today’s medicine is complimentary, with a little pink mignon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I don’t have acupuncture today, I might return for the carrot cake I didn’t have last week since it so disappointed Oscar a dandelion another of my followers.

HellonWheels

Hellonwheels

How she came to be? As you may already be aware Hellonwheels was a nickname a friend of my sisters gave me, way back when, even years before I got my license to drive and that wasn’t until my thirties.

SHUDDUP. I will not take any criticism about how slow I was to learn to drive and get my license. I was a thing and then the other thing and then you will hear about getting it just in time later.

But, today I thought I’d give you the rules and regs of having a mobility scooter.

My process was when I was referred to the council, The City of Yarra a year or two after I developed my disability, it all started to happen.

I was referred to many people to act upon all the things I needed and wasn’t aware of. I thought I’d just start getting carers to help me dry and dress, make my bed and clean my home. An OT (Occupational Therapist) would come out to access how I manage, how I get around, transport etc and she had the brilliant idea to organise a mobility scooter.

Some people just think you go to a shop and buy one and your good to go.

That’s not it at all…

The OT negotiated with my GP, had a copy of all my medical conditions etc. It was deemed I would be safe on a scooter and that the general public would also be safe on the streets and then the man with the van came out from Scooters’ Australia with three scooters.

The first one he told me all about it and I got on and they walked beside me as we did a block on the footpath, we went over some cobbled stones in the guttering, (difficulty rating: some) and along Hoddle Street past my favourite shop there. (It’s called Schotts) Past a laneway, which I did not stop for.

Not stop for prompting him to tell me “I just got killed!” Prompting me to tell him cars never come out of there. My left foot drifts out of the footboard, all because of my Drop-foot and if I’m not putting weight on it, it just does what it likes. Back home, the man disappeared into the van and backed out on a second scooter, slightly bigger.

I got on that one and repeated the ride, being careful not to get myself killed in the same places I’d neglected my basic knowledge of road rules as the first time.

All went well, I can’t recall much about that scooter, it might have been too bouncy or rather big? Big can be a problem when it comes to storing a scooter.

But alas I almost forgot, the man disappeared into the van a third time and came out the biggest scooter. Good to have options and all but I confess I looked at the OT and told her ‘this one must be the big fat Elvis!’

I think I had a little ‘Go’ on the big fat Elvis, but didn’t bother going around the block like I did with the first one.

Now which to choose?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s just tell you all the reasons why I chose the first one. It was the smallest, easier to store, the seat comes off, the front handle (part thing) folds down and the scooter (I’m told) fits into my car boot. Except and he rattled off several cars makes and models, so let’s just say most. Probably not a Porsche or Mini Minor or even….  I don’t know.

My mum has a little Mazda and I don’t even know if it fits in her car boot as we’ve never tried. Point being, if you go to a shopping complex or a day away holiday, you can take Hellonwheels with you. The tyres are solid, so no worrying about flat tyres and I have a satchel on the back.

My scooter was the cheapest at $4,000.00. Of which I obviously did not have and she was not at all fazed by this.

The OT got her letter writing hat on and started pounding the pavement to get me funding.

Now, you probably wonder where Hellonwheels lives? When I first got her, I lived in a single storey terrace house opposite Public Housing. I had a small backyard and no cover out the back. Again, no money, again more potential funding.

The gate at the front that gave us access was replaced and a power supply was required. The landlord also sorted the power supply in my backyard for the scooter.

Funding was sourced for a shed to go in my backyard. It ended up with the scooter and my gardening supplies. It took up half my backyard and because the clothes line was so loose it was able to stay up and I still had half to use for my washing.

The shed has been mine to keep, the next house I lived in, the scooter lived under a BBQ cover as there was not enough room for the shed to go up.

Hellonwheels now resides in my scooter shed under the building I moved to 6 months ago, with my gardening things. There is power to the scooter as it needs to be constantly on live power. Not a battery. Every outing on my scooter is a potential adventure. Also, a possibility of a way to engage the community in discussion about disability and hopefully not a chance to need to make a claim on my Insurance. I have up to $10,000 if I injure someone but I’m really not planning to need it. Fingers crossed.

Today’s Lunch – 4th October 2017

Today’s Lunch

Well,

A brief Hot off the press moment! Unit 2 have left the building! A huge truck was in the driveway this morning……I am sure the truck might have been half empty. (Unit 2 is smaller than units 1 and 3)
You may recall, I didn’t hate the tenants in unit 2, I just intensely didn’t like them?
Ironically, the energy is different already.

I attempted to bring you a different …….foodie offering.
But it hasn’t happened.

Today, is a different Arancini. This has pumpkin and spinach. Still with the side salad.

And the medicine, might need two today. Feeling like a zombie.

It’s a nice day today in Melbourne. I’m hoping I don’t regret wearing my merino wool cowl neck vest over long sleeves. I just wasn’t ready to go full scooter t-shirt! (yes, I have one!)
To be continued………

Cheers,
H

Today’s Lunch – 20th September 2017

Today’s Lunch

A beautiful day today in Melbourne for my foodie good mental health day post!

I was even able to get Hell on Wheels out to scooter to my last appointment. I take my flag inside to avoid it being stolen and my jacket in the bag on the back. Yes, no jacket today! Still wearing wool but only my Marino Cowl neck vest.

Got a window seat at my fav place. Just now hoping someone brings their dog for a walk, coffee, doggy biscuits. They are always so well-behaved when they are begging for their treats.

I’ll see if I can dig out an old photo as there seem to be no four-legged friends today.

Standard fare today. Bolognese Arancini with side salad, with my medicine of course. (Cafe latte)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t imagine I’ll have any surprises today. Fingers crossed. Apart from the serious message I had earlier when I clipped a teenager on my scooter. Oops!

The message was the Universal Go-Slow! You know, when no matter what you do or where you are meant to be obstacles arrive that slow you down. Today, I must have met every elderly wog in my ‘hood with their shopping trolley or walking frame. Just ambling along!
It might surprise you all to know, I have no time or patience……….

Ooohh…….Doggy!

I’ve been known to text photos of the well-behaved pooches here to friends who have dogs. I ask if their dog can do this……

Sometimes they respond with “Yes, my dog can beg for food!”
I beg the question; Beg or Pester?

Cheers,
H