My nerves were humming so loud that I could feel them vibrating from inside of me, or maybe that was just my heart that was still always beating too fast no matter what medication I took or how much IV fluid got infused into me.
After six months of living in a nursing home that I not-so-lovingly referred to as Hell-Crest Commons I was going to visit Side By Side Assisted Living and meet with one of the Nurse Managers there, whose name was Chrissy. Tanya the social worker had also arranged for my weekly scheduled visit with my mom to be that day as well. I had no idea what to even begin to expect.
Side By Side was just a few minutes from the nursing home and it was a big main building that was actually two houses combing together and then a bunch of other houses in the back.
Chrissy had Anna, my mom, and I meet her in the back parking lot which was behind the big main building. I had brought both a wheelchair that I had borrowed from the nursing home and my walker. After we pulled into the parking lot I had my mom help me out of the car with just the walker and I took a few steps with the walker with my mom following with the wheelchair before I sat down in the wheelchair. That seemed to satisfy my mom. My legs burned, and I was completely exhausted, but I was proud of myself and also glad that I had taken those steps. Both Chrissy and Anna told me that I had done a good job too.
Chrissy was very different than what I had expected. She had to be 30 years old or younger, and she was drop-dead supermodel gorgeous with a beautiful figure.
“Welcome to Side by Side,” she smiled warmly at us and I already knew that I liked her. “Would you like to see the main building first or your apartment first?” She asked me.
“My apartment,” I told her.
“It’s down this way then,” Chrissy pointed to the left.
My mom began pushing me in the wheelchair, Anna grabbed my walker, and we followed Chrissy down a long hill of a driveway toward the house at the bottom.
When we finally got there we all stopped in our tracks and stared. There was a problem.
Going into the house were four stairs.
“Can you do stairs?” Anna asked me.
“I don’t know?” I never got that far in PT,” I explained. “I don’t know if I can lift my leg that far up without falling over. I have a lot of balance issues. I’m pretty sure that’s why Lynn never had me try stairs in PT because she didn’t think I could do them.”
“This is the only apartment that I have available in the Independent Living section. We have some available in the Assisted Living section but our CNAs can’t handle your medical issues.” Chrissy explained to me.
I could feel my anxiety kicking up.
The three other women were now all talking about how maybe Side by Side wasn’t going to work out, maybe we were going to need another plan. Finally, I just spoke up. My voice squeaked because I was so nervous.
“Could someone just pick me up and carry me up the stairs?” I asked. “I mean I’m only 4’10 and 68 pounds and it’s only four stairs. I’m always going to have to have someone with me when I leave the apartment because of my mobility issues anyway so why not just have someone carry me up and down the stairs?”
Everyone stopped their jabbering looked at me in the wheelchair looked at the stairs and slowly nodded their heads.
“Yeah that makes sense,” Chrissy agreed with me, “It just can’t be me or anyone who works here because of liability and workman’s comp issues. We can only take people that are a one-person assist max. Because you need someone to completely lift you that’s really more than what we’re supposed to handle, but you’re in the Independent Living area so it’s different and technically you also only require one person to lift you.” She smiled at me. “There you go, another loophole.”
“We can have whoever you hire as your PCA lift you up and down these stairs,” Anna told me.
“In the meantime, I can get you in,” my mom told me.
My mom pushed me up close to the very edge of the stairs and then leaned over me, had me wrap my arms around her shoulders, she grabbed me from under my bottom and she lifted me out of the wheelchair into her arms (along with my backpack full of tube feeding and IV fluids and pumps) and carried me up all four stairs while Anna carried the walker up and Chrissy carried the wheelchair up.
Once we got to the top of the stairs we stopped just at the door. My mom put me back down on the ground with the walker and had me take a few steps with the walker into the house with the wheelchair behind me, just to exercise my legs a little bit. Then I sat back in the wheelchair and we put my backpack back on the back of the wheelchair.
The first part of the house was a kitchen.
“You will be sharing a kitchen with Jim who has the upstairs apartment,” Chrissy explained to me.
On the left of the kitchen was a room with a washer and a dryer.
“This is another room that you will be sharing with Jim. We can do laundry for you once a week or you can have one of your PCAs do your laundry, that is completely up to you. We can give you the laundry soap and dryer sheets that we use or if you have a particular kind that you like you can purchase your own. Once again that’s completely up to you.”
On the right of the kitchen was a locked door.
“This is the door to your part of the house,” Chrissy explained to me. She handed me a key on a cord. “Don’t lose this, this is your key.”
Chrissy used her key to unlock the door and we headed in.
The first thing I noticed was how cheerful the apartment was. All of the walls were a bright cheery yellow that made me think of sunshine and happiness. It made me feel like things were going in the right direction. I was leaving the prison of a nursing home and headed to freedom and the start of a new life where I was going to repeatedly choose happiness over sadness. I was going to choose to look at the positives in every situation instead of the negatives. I was going to do things in my life that created meaning for me. I was going to work on building up positive relationships and a life worth living.
Yes I had a terminal illness, yes I was in incredible pain every day, yes life seemed to keep beating me over the head, but I was going to choose how I reacted.
Right then seeing my future opening up to this beautiful bright yellow apartment with big windows and lots of space, I was soaking it all in.
There was a hallway and then a big living space with a little alcove in the corner that I immediately knew I was going to set up as a little spot for my Keurig to be a coffee and reading corner.
Also off the big living space was a little storage room. Then there was more of a hallway and on the right a bathroom. Further down that hallway, also on the right was a bedroom with a big huge walk-in closet and a beautiful mirror, and next to it a dresser.
I was so excited to bring all my stuff into the apartment and decorate and personalize and make it all mine. It was all so special.
“It’s perfect!” I announced. “I love it!”