Fame knows best

Fame is a bit of a loudmouth when released. I think it is having to deal with me all day every day because my first dog was the same. She needs to left off some steam.

Unlike my first dog, though, Fame comes by it through hard work. Sorta.

One of the things I wanted her to do when got her was bark on command easily in case I needed help.

And it was easy to get her to bark, or speak ... for everyone else -- her puppy raiser, the trainer, my brother-in-law.

She just looked at me ... unless of course I had food.

So I worked on it. Success came when she released that barking would bring other people to my room. 

When she realized that, it was all I could do to keep her from barking whenever I sat on the toilet, where I normally fall. She eyes me know like a vulture, just waiting for me to slip    .

Now I have two problems: First, she sometimes barks before I ask her, but it's always after I have fallen. I also have to persuade her to bark before she grabs a stuffed animal when I fall.

You are getting Fame stories because I am struggling. My shoulder was slowly improving, but I re-aggravated it yesterday trying to recover from a fall. My stomach remains problematic. Zoom calls are hard. Work tire me out. My sleep mask is still not easy to wear. Plus, you know, Friedreich's ataxia.

Mean or right or both?

Sometime last month, I had a virtual visit with my awesome physical therapist to see if she could improve my work setup to stop my shoulder from hurting.

One of her ideas, which I took, was getting a half-tray for my chair to keep my right elbow from slipping off the arm rest. she prefaced this recommendation by saying: Now, I know how much you hate assistive devices but ...

Before I could reply and ask her why in the world, my sister, who was acting as translator, said: Oh, he does. They then riffed a bit about it and laughed.

I still have no idea what I opposed.

For my PT, maybe it was the braces that I didn't want to consider because the braces I had before actually did the opposite of help.

For my sister, perhaps it was the condom catheter, which I didn't (don't) think I could afford because 'd have to hire someone to come in morning and night.

Or maybe it was my reluctance to use my chest strap, which my awesome PT originally advised against.

I decided they were just mean, but now I am not sure.

I was undoing my seatbelt and chest strap the other day, and all these straps and all the effort just made me want to cry and cast aside all assistive crap.

So maybe they're right. But they are definitely mean.

Plus-infinity awesomeness

Last month, most of my nephews and nieces started a Dungeons and Dragons campaign online. My brother and I joined them.

Even though he hears worse than I do, my brother got along OK. He uses a captioning app not available on an iPhone.

I didn't do well.

I had patched my hearing aids into my computer and for some silly reason thought I'd be fine. 

Ten minutes into the first game, I was hopelessly lost, made my apologies, logged off and figured it was another thing Friedreich's ataxia robbed me of.

But they didn't think that.

My brother kept trying to find ways to get me on an Android. One niece talked to her computer geek boyfriend (she said "nerd") about it, and he said use this chat program, which has captioning. The Dungeon master practiced with his girlfriend so the captions would understand him. And they do!

I'm playing D&D tomorrow!

Hard to digest

I have been having stomach issues for two or three weeks. I won't discuss in detail, but I will say they could very well be stress related and I wind up needing to transfer to the toilet more frequently.

The frequency thing  is causing multiple problems, often on the same night, like Thursday.

For one, I fall more often. Not really, not percentage-wise. But because I am doing more transferring, I am slipping more.

On Thursday, my sister and niece pulled me into my chair after I missed the seat on transfer back to my chair.

The other issue is pants-related. When I pull my pants up, I don't always pull them up neatly and properly. This leaves them bunched up and makes using a urinal hard, especially when speed is needed.

A urinal fail was the second problem, although it was made moderately amusing when my niece and nephew answered my call for help to my sister. (I think they just wanted some blog-time.) 

Not a big fan of my stomach.

Master motivator

Fame is a great service dog. When food is involved, she takes her game to another level.

Not always a good level. Sometimes she gets so excited by the prospect of food that she just starts cycling through her commands, hoping she'll get the right one and I'll give her the damn food.

This doesn't surprise me, or probably any dog owner, but her actions this morning did catch me off guard.

My alarm is her alert to hand me my boots, so I can get up and feed her (everything else I do is unimportant). She did her job this morning and went to wait for this slowpoke to get up.

I was getting there, but I have been sleeping quite poorly, so was particularly tired. I knew I had to get up, though, so I said out loud, "You can do it!"

No sooner had I said it then Fame was getting my shoes and putting them on my bed.

"You can do it!" is how I motivate her. It's not food but apparently is pretty good.M

Whoops

It all came to a head last night: three months of grueling telework, a pandemic, racism, fear for my country, a trying stomach.

I was on the back porch during a rain storm, and I just started crying, hard. There was no other reason, I was sure.

Until I was getting ready for bed, and Mom asked if I took my pills the night before.

I am tremendously sad, but the tears weren't an expression of that.