Cruel Irony

One of the cruelest ironies about caring for an adult child with special needs is that while they are getting bigger, parents are getting older and less able to do the heavy lifting; not to mention the chronic fatigue of having been “on duty”  day and night for decades.  It’s wearing on the body, mind, and emotions.

Recently I took my daughter to a new neurologist, as the one we’d been using no longer accepted our insurance.  The new doctor is in a large multistory office building directly across from our area's largest medical center and located in our county seat.  It’s not in a city, exactly, but for our fairly rural area it’s pretty close to being one.  Our area is also rather hilly as we are in a mountainous area.  Thus the building is built sort of into the backside of a hill.  There is a small fairly flat parking lot in the front where the main lobby is, and then there are 4 floors above that.  The remainder of the parking is in a series of 6 lots behind the building on both sides of the driveway going down the hill.  Two of those lots are in covered garage type parking and are by permit only.  They are for the doctors and office staff to use.  This day we were there was particularly sunny, hot and humid.  After circling the top lot, which was the only one with designated spaces for handicapped parking, to no avail, and circling the closest of the rear lots with no better success, I realized that I was going to have to use one of the furthest away lots.  I felt like crying in frustration as the last thing I felt like doing was pushing my daughter in her wheelchair up a couple of hills in the sun and heat. But I just took a deep breath and continued on.  It’s a heavy chair, and she’s an adult, so in total I was pushing about 250 pounds, and I really didn’t want to at all.  The other problem is that when I am out with her alone and there is not an available handicapped van access spot, I have to unload her in her chair before pulling into a spot, park her in between cars, and then pull into the spot.  If the building had security guards, I may have asked if I could unload her into the lobby and then go park but that was not the case.  There was also no valet parking as they have at the hospital. So, to be reasonably sure that when I returned to the van after the visit nobody would have parked in the spot next to us, blocking the ramp deploying without pulling halfway out of the spot before loading her in, I parked in the furthest away lot in the furthest corner.  As it happened, there was a wheelchair for hire bus parked in that area and the driver was relaxing in the shade of a tree nearby.  When I got out of my van to walk around and get my daughter out, he asked if I needed help.  I thought that was very nice and thanked him for the kind offer, but we were ok. It was a about a ¼ mile hike up hill to the rear of the building, and I was hurrying because I’d spent so much time trying to get parked that we were in danger of being late for our appointment.  I’m thankful that there was an elevator, and air conditioning once inside the building.  We were on time for our appointment, which went fairly well, and before long were on the return trek to our van.  The return walk was much easier as it was all downhill, and since I was parked in the shade, it wasn’t too awfully hot once we got in.  It’s kind of funny because that morning I’d been thinking that I would go for a walk after my daughter’s program bus picked her up but had decided it was too hot and opted not to. I ended up getting that walk in anyhow!  I’m lucky that it was not one of the heavy torrential downpour weather days that we’ve been having fairly regularly that day.  I don’t really know what I would have done in that case.  I do know one thing, the next time we have to visit that office I am taking someone with me so that I can either unload close to the building and then go park, or have help pushing up that hill.  I am not as strong as I once was, not that I’m feeble, but my back and knees were quite achy that night and I took it easy the following day so as not to aggravate my back problems.

I don’t often tell the stories of the times we struggle a bit with our daughter, and I don’t do it now to get sympathy or make me look laudable.  I do it simply to shine a light on situations that others may not be aware of.  I have no solutions to this problem to offer, except that perhaps this particular building could benefit from some wheelchair accessible spots in the closest of the rear lots where we were able to access the elevator.  Otherwise, offering to help someone like me is appreciated, even if we don’t accept the help; we always appreciate the gesture.