Next On Cops? ? ?

August 2019

A couple of days later, Dave and I asked our roommate to move out because he wasn’t respecting me as a woman. That ended with a police report. He kept asking Dave what he wanted him to do? As if Dave controlled me. This whole time I was sitting on the couch he stood behind me and told Dave that I was mentally insane. I was stuck on the couch panicking. I finally got in my wheelchair and went out the front door to try to get away from him. Dave also came out with me but the roommate followed us out. Dave and I had to go two doors down and the roommate stayed in our driveway and was leaning against my van and stared at us for 15 minutes I think.

Then he started walking towards us. In fear of what he might do to me I went to the neighbor’s door and yelled help,help. They never answered their door but I noticed there was a small camera on the door bell that I couldn’t reach. I guess someone called the police because they came a few minutes later. The police said by law he had the right to stay in our home for 30 days but xsuggested we contact the Justice of the Peace in the morning for more information. So we were planning to call them first thing in the morning and relax the rest of the night. Unfortunately, later that night he threatened to sue us if we didn’t give him $2000 for his moving expenses. We weren’t worried because we didn’t think he had a case but to cover our bases, we texted our contact at an organization called Disability Rights. I also consulted with my old physical therapist, a really good friend of mine, whose husband is a lawyer. The Justice of the Peace advised on how many days he had to move out. Luckily, our ex-roommate moved out within 4 days of this instance. I told Dave even though the money is nice, having a roommate is not worth the insanity.

Lately I have felt like people are not respecting the way my husband, Dave, and I like things done a certain way in our home. I am very grateful for the help but I just need people to be my hands and legs. Mentally I know exactly how I want things done although I don’t want to be a micromanager. Such as sweeping/mopping, making the bed/changing sheets, etc. You would be surprised that some people don’t know how to do these basic tasks.

For instance, once Dave and I were still asleep and our attendant decided to rearrange things in the living room. I didn’t particularly notice but Dave did, and got mad. I agreed with Dave and thought it was a very strange thing to do. Another time I had told my attendant multiple times to throw my wet depends in the main trash can in the garage instead of putting them in the bathroom trash so the bathroom trash wouldn’t smell. Yet another situation occurred with Dave, he asked one of our attendants to only feed the fish a certain amount of food and she disagreed about the amount of food. It is like I don’t know anything about fish so I don’t get involved with the fish. I trust he knows how much to feed fish because he has had fish throughout his life so he should know. I feel like it is our house so why can’t people respect how we want things done without disagreeing with us.

We have so many attendants coming and going. If we changed our lifestyle every time we got a new attendant to meet their lifestyle, we would change our way of living every six months. Dave and I just want to live the way we chose too.

The Trials and Tribulations of Life

July 18, 2019

NIGHTMARE!

It has been three months since I have blogged because Dave and I have been in the process of finding, hiring, and keeping attendants. It has been a nightmare. We hired four people, two in which we really liked. The first person only worked two days and then picked up more hours at her other job. The next one was totally awesome. She would clean most of the day even brought her own vacuum and got all cobwebs off the ceiling. She worked any shift we needed her too. One day she came to work with a sad face and said her husband got offered a management position at a large grocery store in Dallas. We lost two good attendants in a month and if they were both still working us now we would have it made!

I just celebrated my 45th birthday and I hope in “my new year” I will have better luck finding and keeping attendants. I can’t believe I turned 45 and my parents are in their late 70’s. Gasping to find solutions for Dave’s and my attendant care problem, we considered moving to Houston where my sisters, mom and stepfather live so they could be our backup when we didn’t anyone to help us. Although, the reality is that my parents can’t care for our physical needs because they are struggling to take care of themselves. I guess it is true parents take care of their as they grow up and then the children take care of their parents as they get older. But how can I reciprocate? I want to help care for my parents but I am not sure how can. I will figure it out, I hope!

In the midst of finding a solution to our attendant problem, Dave received an email from the owner of the art studio where he paints. She is planning to develop a community for people with and without disabilities to live alongside each other. Disabilities will range from physical to intellectual. This community will have apartments and individual homes that will be wheelchair accessible. Dave and I plan on purchasing one of the houses in this community with the hope that our community could serve as backup attendants for us. We will incorporate our neighbors who have intellectual disabilities to help us eat, clean, etc. It sounds like a wonderful answer to our attendant care problems but it will be at least two years for this to be in place.

Speaking One Word at a Time or Composing messages and Then Speaking in Sentences

May 9, 2019

Speech Generated Devices (SGD) come with the function to speak one letter at a time, one word at a time, or wait to speak an entire sentence. It is usually the person using the SGD who chooses how they want their device to speak. Some people choose to use a combination of two or more speaking functions with their communication partner(s) and the environment.

A person using a SGD might turn on the speak one word at a time function, if they are responding to questions in a big audience, or maybe it is only one person who would walk away if they aren’t receiving constant feedback. Another reason a person might want to speak one word at a time would be to keep their communication partners engaged in the topic while they compose their message(s) to contribute to the conversation

On the other hand, there are times a person needs to compose their message(s) and speak their message(s) at once. Situations such as: being in a meeting with several people (face-to-face or conference calls), in classroom discussions, answering questions, or composing message(s) and when you don’t want people to guess what you are going to say.

Trip to the Neurologist

April 2019

I am going to the Neurologist tomorrow. We will discuss medication options that might help the dystonia in my left hand. I am not getting too excited because I am afraid the doctor won’t prescribe anything to help. On the other hand, they might know the exact medication to prescribe me. It is a wait and see situation but at least I will find out in a couple of hours.

Yay, I am writing this with my left hand. I finally got an appointment with a Neurologist for my bad arm. I missed my first appointment due to attendant issues (that is a subject for another blog), on Thursday I went to the Neurologist. After the doctors examined me (I saw a resident who consulted with another doctor in the practice), they decided to put me on a medication called trihexyphenidyl. This is a medication mostly used for Parkinson’s patients to control the trimers in the body. I have been on the medicine for two months and I already notice a difference. It is allowing me to type this blog, a greater relief. The doctor said that he can go higher on the dosages, if I needed to.

He also ordered a CAT scan to make sure everything looks right in the brain. I know he found some cobwebs up there but hopefully nothing else.

find out she was moving but she is in her sixties and I knew she liked to travel, especially Texas Hill Country. She plans to move up there eventually. Its funny because I think I will probably see her more because she won’t be so busy when she comes to visit Austin. Well, I will still have to compete with her grandchildren.

For me her party ended up being a reunion of friends/former co-workers that Julie and I had in common. It was so awesome to see everybody. I found it interesting that I worked five years in the Austin ISD in the Assistive Technology Department with some of these great people and knew what was going on in their daily life. But now we hardly see each other. We went through the good times, laughed a lot, had disagreements, cried together, and a whole lot more. We even went to out of state assistive technology conferences. Once we took a road trip from Texas to Florida for a conference, we made a few stops along the way in New Orleans and a little cabin in the Florida pan handle. It was one trip I will never forget, especially when my two friends walked me into and the staff thought I was already drunk. I ordered a daiquiri and the waitress said, “Don’t you think she already had too many.” I thought those years would last forever but times change. Seeing my former co-workers took me back to those old times. For a moment, I felt like we were back working together again. Especially when my communication device fell on the concrete floor while I was going up a makeshift ramp the screen cracked. We laughed because there were so many times that we received calls from teachers or speech-language pathologists saying that their students’ communication device had fallen and the screen cracked. Julie commented, she never thought about taking my device of my tray before I went up a “makeshift ramp” that broke.

On another note, this week was Spring Break and one of my attendants had to bring her kids to work. Her kids had come with her several times off and on for about six months. Her boy is five years old and he loves for me to play with him. He loves to ride on the back of my wheelchair. He puts his little cars on my tray and I tried to push them. Many of the time they end up on the floor and he will pick them up and put them back on my tray. He does this for about three minutes and asks me if I am done playing and I say yes. My favorite part is when he is about to leave, he comes over to hug me. I hold my arm out and he will walk into it. Then I will grab him with my arm and give him a big hug. I get about 10 hugs!

She also has a 9-year-old daughter who likes to help with my care. I joke with my attendant that her daughter is trying to take over her job. She likes: to put on my glasses, give me my phone, re-stock the refrigerator with cokes, and give me a drink when I sit on the couch. Sometimes she will feed me chips or candy. I would hope that if they had a kid in their classroom with a disability, they would be friends with them. The daughter would probably be more concerned about their care because one time when they were leaving my house and no else was going to be home with me, she was so concerned that no one would be home to take care of me.

prescribe anything to help. On the other hand, they might know the exact medication to prescribe me. It is a wait and see situation but at least I will find out in a couple of hours.