My Journey with MS and Other Ailments Part 5 – House Stories

since I started this series I feel I have to continue until I get to current events

My Journey with MS and Other Ailments Part 3

When all 3 of our sons graduated from school at Alburnett we had decided to try to sell our house and move into Cedar Rapids to get away from the daily driving to our jobs. We started looking at houses on the northeast side of Cedar Rapids. Both Janette and I had grown up there and we are Northeast Siders. We tried to do it the way you’re supposed to where you sell your house 1^st and then find one to move to. We found a number of houses it with our suitable but ours did not sell. We knew I had MS but it wasn’t really that bad at that time. Toward the end of the listing we received one very low offer and would’ve considered it but they wanted three-week possession. That meant moving twice. We opted against it. At that time we decided “oh well we’ll just stay at Alburnett” will just put our money into better vehicles and try to pay off the house as quickly as possible.

After trying to sell and failing we decided to make some modifications. Some were from the need for resale and some were to help with my condition. We had the driveway paved, and had been gravel. I lost the ability to shovel on the gravel. Shoveling snow one gravel is not easy. Our elderly neighbor Mrs. Newman had a paved driveway and the snowblower. I had been taking care of her driveway, her sidewalk and our sidewalk since her husband had passed away. After we got our driveway paved I purchased the snowblower (two-stage) and did her driveway and ours. I was able to keep moving snow with the snowblower until it became impossible for me due to my left leg dragging. At that time Janette took over. I always enjoyed using the snowblower. After all the years of shoveling the snowblower just walked through the snow and made it so much easier. So we paved the driveway and a few years later it wasn’t enough because I couldn’t do it anymore.

I could still do some things so we decided to update our kitchen because we felt it was one of the things that made our house difficult to sell. We added a dishwasher and garbage disposal. We had done without them for 20 something years. We felt resale required it though. At the same time there was an area of the house in the back that I enclosed. It could have been a small kitchen nook. I turned it into a pantry and primarily a laundry room. Since I couldn’t go up and down stairs I was able to do laundry because it was now on our 1^st floor. We added a gorgeous door with frosted glass panes going into this room. I did a lot of projects over the years but this one was the most fun. Due to my MS I had to develop a system where I would work for a while until my left leg quit on me. I would lay down and rest and then get up after a while and do some more work. It was slow but with Janette’s help we got it done. Others helped also but there were too many for me to name here. Thanks to all of you.

Of course after about a year I could no longer pull myself up and put close in the washer. I was no longer strong enough to bring the clothes out of the dryer and keep them from being wrinkled.

At that time I would drive my power chair around the house. There was a ramp that led to the garage. I would drive my power chair to the bathroom doorway and then use the sink to pull myself in and rolled onto the walls until I could do my business. Same with showers, I would put my right leg in the shower and then hold on to something with one hand and dragged my left leg in. This didn’t seem so bad to one day I slept point my left leg and fell. My ribs hit the side of the tub and I’m pretty sure they were broken. I knew that it was pointless to go to the doctor because they don’t do anything for broken ribs and less they punctured your lung.

It was time to get serious about finding a different house. We decided to look for a house or condo. After finding what we needed we would purchase it and then put our house up for sale. We found a great realtor, Kris Watkins. I will follow up on this in my next installment.