Things Are Looking Up

This is our front staircase, leading up to the second floor in our house.

I've been having an increasingly difficult time getting up these stairs over the past couple of months, and it's become a problem that we decided to solve by purchasing a stairlift.

There's really not too many things that are more emasculating than finding you can't get up a flight a stairs without going into a crawl, and spending more and more time pausing on each stair to catch your breath...  going up the stairs had never been a problem like this. 

But now it is.

And so, we bought the stairlift, and they installed it yesterday...

I suppose that as people age normally, they get into this stuff much more gradually than I've gotten into them with the cancer. 

With me, this "aging process" has been sped up...

My first ride up the stairs yesterday was just a test run with the installer, to get a feel for how it works, and so on.

But using it to get up the stairs and go to bed last night was the ride that gave me a sense of relief that made me feel really good.  I wasn't exhausted when I sat down on the bed.  When I lay down on the bed, I wasn't out of breath from the workout of crawling slowly up the stairs.  It makes all the difference in the world, now that I can go upstairs anytime without it being a problem.

I also got this in the mail today:

I'm on a roll...

Actually, I applied for this parking placard at the end of September, about the same time I started my online application for Social Security. 

The Social Security got approved within a month, and I'll be getting my first check in about two weeks.

So, now I'm offcially handicapped with difficulty walking, difficulty breathing, and (last but not least) having a medical prognosis of being dead within 3 to 6 months.

I guess that last part is where the expeditious nature of my Social Security approval came into play.

But at least I'll now have some income each month for however many more months I manage to hang onto my day to day life here.  It really does make a big difference, too, because we've had a long dry spell here for the last four or five months, financially.  People have helped, and I've really appreciated the genererosity, to be sure.  But I think we've finally made it to the other side of this money rift, and I thank everyone who helped out to get us through it.

Things are looking up.