Tedd’s Freedom Run
Earlier this year, I was driving to work every day, working 12 hour days, and driving home. I would drive and do the Grocery Shopping. I like doing the grocery shopping. I always do a better job than Sheri. I always do most of the cooking too. I LOVE to cook! I also am TOTALLY ADDICTED to cooking shows on TV too! I can sit and watch Iron Chef all…day…long!!! And don’t even get me started on Cake Boss! Sheri is a Cake Boss Junkie! I think we have seen EVERY Cake Boss episode ever made.
A few months ago, I started noticing that I was having problems paying attention while driving and that I wasn’t quite able to process all the input coming at you while you’re driving. I’ve known that I have dementia for a long time. My Neurologist has known and Sheri has known, but no one ever wants to officially say it or tell it to your face until it’s pretty damn obvious to everyone that shit just ain’t right in your head anymore!
Anyway, I stopped driving for the most part and Sheri did most of the driving. Basically the only driving I did was short driving down to CVS and Albertsons (our grocery store), which are less than 1 mile away, and to the Bank and Home Depot, all within 5 miles. So all the driving I did was to places I always drove to; I always took the same routes and always went in the “slow traffic” part during the day.
Well, I started getting scared driving because I couldn’t pay attention to all the traffic around me, traffic lights, slowing down, taking off, dozing off while driving, daydreaming while driving, not being able to keep my car in my lane, and most of all, I kept having these episodes where all of a sudden I would have this realization, HOLY SHIT! I’M IN A CAR AND I’M DRIVING!!! WHERE AM I AND WHERE AM I GOING??? It was like I had woken up from a dream and when I woke up, instead of waking up in my bed, I woke up behind the wheel of a car speeding down the freeway at 80mph drifting over into another lane!!!
After the last scary episode, I swallowed a huge gulp of pride and decided that the risk of running over and killing a family full of little kids because I was too damn stubborn to stop driving just wasn’t worth it. So, I don’t have a car anymore and I’m a “shut-in” now.
I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, but I’m in a great deal of pain most of the time and am disabled so my options for going out and walking are limited. I can get out and walk a little in our complex, but there’s something rather depressing about walking around in a parking lot by yourself, afraid to walk too far from your house in case you start to have a seizure and need to get back home quickly, or in case you have a sudden wave of fatigue and almost collapse to the ground and can barely walk and need to be very close to your home otherwise you’ll just be stranded where you are until you gather your strength or until hours later when your wife gets home and can help carry/drag you back home.
Sheri and I looked into some inexpensive Respite care, but they’ve been unreliable, flakey and/or plain unavailable when we’ve needed them. I’ve joined half a dozen different “support groups” but I don’t quite “fit the profile” for most other people there so they can’t really relate to what I’m going through, or the sites are so flakey and slow to make them practically unusable.
Being a shut-in sucks. All of my friends are my co-workers. All of my co-workers live so far away from where I live to make driving to here impractical and I can’t go see them for lunch anymore now that I can’t drive and given the huge distance, they sure as hell can’t come pick me up for our “reunion lunches” anymore. Being a shut-in sucks bad! Sheri works long hours and doesn’t get home until around 6:30 PM almost every day! And she certainly doesn’t need to be burdened with having to take me out running to CVS and/or Albertsons to let me do my little errands and get my ‘out’ time.
Today, I tested out the “Tedd Freedom Run” to see if it was cost-effective and to see if it was feasible. I called a cab and had them take me down to my local CVS. I had them sit in the parking lot and wait on me while I went inside and browsed the few isles that I needed to in order to find the few items that I’d kept forgetting to order online because I didn’t quite know exactly what I wanted because I had to actually browse and see what was there.
Taxi Round-Trip From Home to CVS and Back: $30
Tedd’s Freedom from being a Shut-In: Priceless!
Today has been a very, VERY GOOD DAY!
>ð|~@-@~|ð<
teddwebb 