I'm 2 years in with being in a wheelchair.  Yesterday I had a mental collapse.  I had been trying to get things done and it's so very difficult.  You only have one hand to work with, the other you have to use to wheel yourself. Jobs people hate but take for granted is something simple like emptying the dishwasher.  I have to line up what goes in the upper cabinets and wait for somebody to come along and put them up.  When trying to cook, I can't reach the knobs to turn the stove off without most of the time getting burned.

There are only a few chores that I can do pretty well like cleaning out the fridge, organizing lower cabinets.  I have trouble picking up things off the floor, I feel like I'm going to fall.  

Getting to the toilet is extremely hard.  I have some paralysis left over from brain surgery gone wrong and saddle anesthesia, so by the time I feel like I need to go, it means NOW.  I have to struggle to get up in the wheelchair, make it to the bathroom, get up once again and get on the toilet.  Honestly most times I don't make it.  It's constant showering, cleaning up, scrubbing down the toilet and my chair, and it's so very frustrating.  It's wearing maternity pads because they are big and collect a good bit.  It still makes me feel stupid and useless.

Yesterday we were decorating the tree and I can only do what I can reach.  I can't place the presents.  I can't put up lights.  I put up ornaments of my son and grandfather in law and I just wanted to go be with them, it gets so tiring.  I can't exercise, I can rarely leave the house (no ramp), my spouse has a bad back and doesn't like to life my chair out of the trunk (I have a power chair but don't have the truck to mount it to).  So I see life from inside a door looking out.  Being outside and going and seeing and walking and doing was always such a big part of my life and all that's gone.

If we paint, I can only so far up on the wall and again need help, and willing helpers are extremely rare.

The world isn't made for the handicapped.  The only beach I get get on is 2 hours away or more, then I can only get out of the car and sit there.  I can't go near the water anyway due to vertigo leftover from the brain surgery. I think I'm the palest person in Florida.  A lot of places aren't accessible from a wheelchair.  Who in their right mind makes a ramp go uphill?  A casino here has uphill ramps.  Maybe for some it's ok, but my right sholder has tendinitis, left leg has a ruptured achilles.

One of the absolute parts is my early dementia and it's getting way worse.  The simplest of words escapes me. Talking is difficult, writing is better because it's from a different part of the brain.  Trying to find a word is like playing old people charades and it's so frustrating.  I forget everything, I can forget mid sentence what I was saying.  I forget names, places, things.

We have a pool where I live but I can rarely go since it's so hard to leave the house, and then I have to wait until nobody is there because I have to roll up and fall in and looking the way I do is so embarrassing.  My right leg looks like I have elephantitis, ankle swollen huge, foot turned to the right.  Everything so so hard.  I had a doctor recently tell me to just get up and walk, and he wasn't even a televangelist.  Sure there doc, I would love to get up and just walk.  I don't ride scooters in stores, I rarely get to go, because they are widely known as fatmobiles, you look like you are lazy when all you would love to do is be up and push that buggy.  Before the surgeon destroyed my foot, I learned to walk with crutches and walking pushing a buggy was extremely helpful and exercise.  That's gone now too.  It seems more and more of me is disappearing and I don't like the person I've become, fat, disabled, confused..........I spend more time wishing I wasn't here than trying to enjoy being here.  I've been told I enjoy the chair because I'm lazy, the comments are frequent and they hurt deep.  

Let's not forget the relentless pain, my neck, right arm, both legs, both feet, my back.  The cramps in my foot are nearly intolerable.  It's not like a charlie horse in your leg you walk off, I can't walk it off and it lasts for hours.  My skin feels like it's on fire.  I long to take a hot bath but I don't have a walk in tub, so I just try to deal.  THC and sleeping pills help me sleep but do not help the pain.  Sometimes I just want my mom or pawpaw in law, somebody to just give me a hug and say it will be okay.