SIGH! After I published my last post about Shurlan’s ral (a term coined by some members of my family after my grandmothers funeral – they crazy…go figure 😊) I reread it a couple times, looking for errors etc and an overwhelming sense of sadness came over me. I was:
*sad for Shurlan
*sad for J,DeeJay, Dom, Devon
*sad because dr. G was moving back home in 2 days and I’m going to miss him tremendously
*sad because…life…and I have to deal with my wretched disease ALL THE DAMN TIME
it all came crashing down on me all at once. For the first time in a long time, I felt really alone and didn’t want to go thru it all by myself. I called CYute and we made plans to lime. I don’t think he will really understand how much I really appreciated and needed that lime that night.
anyway…so I went home on July 3rd for 10 days. Heading to Trinidad from Atlanta is not the easiest thing to do. There are no direct flights so we have to choose if we want to go thru Texas, New Jersey or Florida. I chose Fort Lauderdale because the airport, cost and schedule were ideal. When I’m travelling with my scooter, I’m on my own – I have no assistance from the wheelchair attendants in any airport. Ramp guys bring the scooter for me when we land and I bounce starter and take off to where I need to go. Landing in Fort Lauderdale on my way back was no different; I got on Bumblebee and started making my way to Customs.
I don’t know if u regular folk ever noticed this but elevators are always in a different spot than escalators that u use and that path is always less travelled. So I was heading to the elevator and bumblebee just stopped. Ah sheeeiiit! My knee usually rests near to the power switch so I hoped that maybe it bounced the switch and turned it off by mistake. I flipped the switch and still…nothing! I flipped it about 4 times to make sure I was seeing correctly and yes, the battery gauge was not moving (the indicator that the scooter is on).the battery was fully charged…that wasn’t the problem (this had happened before but both times I got him going again…after a long time. I didn’t have that time right then). i didn’t know what the hell to do (I haven’t mentioned that I was beat because my flight from Trinidad had been delayed 2 hours). I looked toward the elevator and there was 1 wheelchair attendant there pushing a passenger. Now u hadda understand, these attendants are essentially assigned to passengers who need assistance and remember that’s not me. Shit! Luckily for me, the fella was very helpful and the passenger he was pushing didn’t have a connecting flight and wasn’t in a rush. He left and found a supervisor who’d seen me deplane and who, realising my predicament, brought another chair and told the fella to push us both to baggage claim where he would tell the ramp guys to take the ‘bee. I eh go lie, as frustrated as I was about the situation, I was glad that I was in bumblebee cuz the way he folds up, it was much less hassle to move him around. By this time, I’d missed my flight to Atlanta so I had to call GHK who luckily had nothing going on that night so she could pick me up. I really cannot get into the all the details of everything else that happened in the airport when we got to baggage claim but it included my sitting in a chair (that I can’t work) for what seemed like at least an hour and waiting on the wheelchair fella to square away his original passenger and then come back for me. It was torture…I was frustrated, I was tired, I was hungry, I wanted to get the hell to Atlanta and most scarily, I wasn’t mobile.
finally I got by GHK and more drama. Every time I go by her I use a walker cuz of the layout of the apartment complex and the apartment itself. Well this was not a planned visit, so I had to hold on to both she and Dx to get to the apartment and when inside they decided to put me in a folding chair that they dragged to and fro…sigh; it was a rough night to say the least. My original flight would had had me walking thru my front door about 9 on Saturday night…instead, I walked thru my door at 9:30 Sunday morning. There’s good news…apparently there was a blown fuse in Bumblebee’s guts that has since been replaced so he is as good as new.
All’s well that ends well I suppose. I’ve had nightmares of not having my scooter and the shit actually came true. I can safely say that I don’t ever want to relive that ever again.
hol’ it dong, Stax