06/09/2026
Unfortunately, the old saying “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” absolutely applied for our arrival to my parent’s river house!
We left our branded trip in North Carolina early with no solution to my wheelchair woes, and a pressing deadline right around the corner with our departure back home to Minneapolis. If I can’t come up with a solution before then, our travels will undoubtedly be 20 times harder than it should be, and that’s with traveling being plenty hard already. A very stressful position to be in, but having a little over a week with which to work, in my hometown where we have connections, gave me some confidence.
The “getting worse” part actually didn’t have to do with my wheelchair at all… Once we arrived to the river, my old power chair was ready to rock and roll, thanks entirely to KellyMama’s foresight! For those who have never maintained a power wheelchair, their batteries will completely die if they don’t receive a regular charge. The last time I used this chair was literally rolling down the aisle when Charisma and I were married. Meaning, mom has kept this chair charged for over 5 freakin’ years of no use! Talk about prepping for a rainy day…
So no, having a chair to get around in wasn’t an issue. The first issue arose when I got in bed, undressed, and, during my daily skin check, Charisma spotted something small at the base of my tailbone: a pressure sore. The first I’ve had on my bottom since I was in the hospital right after breaking my neck.
I didn’t take this well. I never do take health complications well. They scare me, and that’s a big part of why I’m generally healthy; I’ve had my fill of missing out on life already. A serious pressure sore could mean weeks-to-months of bedrest, lying on my stomach, hoping an infection doesn’t take hold that may escalate to be life-threatening. Seriously… Pressure sores are no joke.
Charisma knows me well, and helped me process the sore. Thankfully, it was very small and had none of the tell-tale signs of a serious pressure sore. We’d keep an eye on it, and Charisma assured me there was no reason to panic. We figured it must have been from the 8+ hours of driving where I transferred into the rear van seat since we were working on my broken chair, and including the drive all the way to VA. There are reasons everyday wheelchair-users have such customized chairs, and a cushion perfectly designed to protect one’s b***y is one of the most important. Despite all the weight shifts I did in that van seat, pressure sores can develop deceivingly quickly, and with how clammy I was getting, I already had a bad feeling.
As usual, Charisma was right. After just a few days, the spot faded. I didn’t experience any symptoms, really, and that meant at least one stressor was gone.
But there was another…
After getting dressed our very first morning at the river, I used the sliding board to transfer into my chair. Charisma and I went upstairs for breakfast. ClemDaddy cooked up some scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles, and fruit; the works! It was scrumptious. Charisma and I then spent all day on the dock, relishing the quiet sounds of nature and our first slow moment in days. Later on, mom cooked a nice homemade dinner and we enjoyed a lazy evening before heading to bed. Where we discovered our next problem.
My sliding board was gone.
We weren’t stressed, though, because there would be no reason for the board to be anywhere other than the bedroom, which is pretty small. We searched high and low, however, and it was nowhere to be found. Weird… But it absolutely had to be in the vicinity, at least! Nope. We retraced our steps, thinking if it could possibly be somewhere else, but since I only use it for getting in and out of bed that would make absolutely no sense! All four of us searched hard, to no avail. The board had just… disappeared. Gone. We were flabbergasted.
While my pressure sore issue resolved itself, the vanishing sliding board mystery has not. It still remains out there, somewhere, all alone, probably wishing for a warm bottom to slide across it once again. Our best theory: Charisma, unbeknownst to us all, entered into a brief fugue state in the middle of the day, removed the sliding board from the bedroom, and, undetected, took it to the dock and hurled it into the river, before regaining consciousness. We have zero evidence of this, but that’s probably how fugue-Charisma intended, so it’s all we’ve got!
Anyway, unlike my wheelchair and a pressure sore, a missing sliding board is something we’re more than capable of working around. Now that we’re settled, I can’t imagine what else could happen, so I anticipate the rest of our trip should be smooth. Hopefully.
We’ll see…
