It finally happened. Just now, outside, off the beaten track. I got myself royally stuck.
I’m rolling around my usual route in the backyard, minding my own business. I stop to look at the slight downhill slope across the grass to the end of the pond where I do my frog observing. It seems to be drier than the last time I considered going down there several weeks ago. Go on, you can do it, urges the very small but obnoxiously loud part of my risk-taking brain. Just a little ways on the grass, to test it. So I do. Everything seems solid and I continue down the slope about the length of my chair. Not far, but far enough to realize the ground is very soft.
I gear down, straighten my wheels, back up. The wheels on the left side of my chair spin uselessly. No problem, I think, I’ll just go forward. Not only does that not work, it actually deepens the rut I’ve already dug for myself. It’s a fitting metaphor for my life.
Crap. Now I’m needing-to-call-for-help stuck, my least favourite position. Embarrassed, I look around the backyard. Even the smokers have deserted me. When in doubt, wait five minutes. Still no help, so I look down at my wrist and push my “care guard” button. This is what I do in my apartment to summon help when I need to go to the bathroom, open the window, clean up the mess after I spill food on the floor or any other sundry task. I’m a long way from my apartment now. Will it work from such a distance?
It does. The PSW who has the unfortunate responsibility of taking care of me today comes to my rescue. She flips the two switches that change my chair from drive to push mode, but isn’t strong enough to move it herself. Two more PSWs arrive. I want to hide under a rock. I manage to convince them that going forward is a BAD idea because it will only take me further into soft ground. The three of them can’t budge it.
A 14-year-old guy from the kitchen comes out to add his brawn to the mix, and the four of them lift my chair and me out of the muck and back onto the sidewalk.
Our next challenge is cleaning up the sludge that has embedded itself between the treads on my tires on the left side. My numero uno PSW has found a hose and we use water and an old stick to scrape the worst of the mud off. Fortunately, the woman who supervises the PSWs has arrived just in time to take a picture and post it on Facebook, to make my humiliation complete.
Will this ever happen again? Well, I know I’ll be making lots of trips to my frog-watching spot, but maybe not until June or whenever the weather is hot and dry for a while. I’m confident that I won’t get stuck this way again, but I know I can find some new ways to run into trouble. I’m pretty starved for nature right now.
I have to get my jollies somehow. Other than shopping at Walmart without a mask, or refusing to take my meds, reckless behaviour with my power chair is the riskiest thing I do.
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