Help me get in my bathroom
Donation protected
Hi, my name is Frank. I've had MS for the last 29 years and I was doing OK until March, 2020. When my wife and I isolated, I lost the ability to work out at my local Anytime Fitness. I had been going 3x a week. As a result, I started losing all of my muscle mass. Add to this inactivity, I was suddenly beset with incredible pain from my neck, shoulders, lower back, sacrum, coccyx, and shooting down the outside of both legs to the top of my feet by my big toe. This was exaserbated by my constant sitting.
I thought that I was going insane, I didn't think that anyone could have this much pain, day after day. When 2021 came and I felt safe to venture outside, I spent a lot of my time getting MRIs from my cervical spine to my coccyx. There were herniated and bulging disks up and down my spine. My shoulders, both of which had been repaired for rotator cuff tears, had both retorn. I also spent a lot of time going to pain management, where I found some relief.
In January, 2022, my legs stopped holding me up. My legs had always been weak, but I had good upper body strength to compensate. Without my upper body, I couldn't get up from the floor, so I was reduced to crawling to my bathroom and painfully hoisting myself onto the toilet, then reversing the process by leaning off of the toilet and crawling back to hoist myself painfully up onto my office chair, my left shoulder screaming at me the entire time. . I had to sleep in the chair because I could no longer manage to get into my raised platform waterbed.
On May 1st, I developed yet another UTI that put me out of my head. I scared the hell out of my wife, who called an ambulance to take me to Crozer Hospital. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but like I said, I was out of my head. My 13 day stay was less than pleasant. But it culminated as an inpatient stay at Kindred Rehab, which was a blessing. I had physical and occupational therapy and they arranged, through my Medicare, to get me a wheelchair and a hospital bed. I was thinking that my life was finally on the upswing, but then I realized that my bathroom door didn't open to 90 degrees because my bathtub intruded into its path. Therefore, it would never open wide enough to allow my wheelchair into the bathroom. My wife and I wracked our heads for solutions and came up with one that we thought may work. If we got rid of the bathtub and installed a roll-in shower and replaced the stock wooden door with an accordion door, I would have the clearance to enter the bathroom.
Organizer
Frank Manerchia
Organizer
Boothwyn, PA