If it an't broke, don't fix it

As we waited for the school bus this morning, Maggie and I took a good long look at the house. It needs a paint job that is for sure. We talked about how skinny and tall it is. I suddenly realized Maggie has not been in the upstairs of the house in more than two years. We used to carry her up there all the time to hang out or sleep in our room if we did not have a night nurse, but not anymore. She is too big. Maggie is limited to the four rooms downstairs because there is no access to the upstairs bedrooms.

We have loved in this house for 22 years. It was my grandmother’s house and we bought it from my dad before we had kids. It was such an enormous house when it was just the two of us. That changed as kids arrived, and got bigger and continued to accumulate “stuff.” With all Maggie’s equipment added to the mix we really are shoe horned in here now.

This house is very typical San Francisco, it goes straight up, and that makes it among the worst possible domiciles for a wheelchair. We have made adaptations to make the house work for us; we moved Maggie downstairs and converted the breakfast room into her bedroom. We remodeled to add a shower to the half bath off that room and my husband built a deck off the back. We had an elevator installed outside from the back yard up to the deck off Maggie’s room; it does not go all the way up to the bedrooms.

Most of the work was done about five years ago when Maggie was half the size she is now. She’s still very small, but as she grows, her equipment grows with her. The shower chair fills up the shower now. There is no room for Maggie to hang her legs off the end of the chair. When she gets a shower, she is wedged in there with her legs against the wall. Maneuvering her wheelchair around the four rooms downstairs takes some engineering as well.

There are many doors in this house, including French doors in the living room and into Maggie’s room. We have removed the two dispensable doors into the kitchen, but the rest of the doors are necessary. The wheelchair fits through the doorways, but often an open door from one room blocks access in another area. For example, here is the open door to Maggie’s room blocking the doorway to the kitchen. We have the same problem in the hallway. The open doors from the living room and the basement create obstacles. In order to get through you have back the wheelchair up and go around to shut the doors. Maggie helps sometimes. When we are coming out of the kitchen through the doorway pictured, she will often get her foot behind that door and use the high muscle tone in her legs to swing it closed ahead of us. It does not always work because she has to hit it just right, but

when it does, she is very proud of herself.

The large wheelchair also means our dining room table is off center. The dining room is the pass through from the front room to Maggie’s room, so we need a wide enough area to make it through with the chair. It doesn’t really matter except the chandelier always looks a bit cockeyed because it’s not centered above the table.

When you get right down to it, this house does not work for us at all. The adaptations we made are no longer effective and I am not sure what else we can do. Occasionally, I look at flat ranchers and marvel at how much easier it would be for all of us; but I know we will likely never move. Getting a house like that would likely require relocating to the suburbs, and for many reasons, I do not think that’s for us.

We are city people and we take advantage of the amenities of living where we do. Golden Gate Park is just ½ block away. Most importantly, however, all of the services Maggie receives are county based and San Francisco City and County are one and the same. Leaving the City means moving outside the county and starting everything over again. School is working, the nursing is set up, her doctors are just a few blocks away, and she is familiar and happy. In addition, Steve would have to stop riding his bike and commute which would be more time away from home and more frustration. Personally I used to be adamantly against moving to the ‘burbs, but I don’t feel that way anymore. At this point, I would probably be fine either way, but I do love living here, despite the Rubik’s cube we have to do every time we want to go from room to room.

For now, we will just ignore the hassles and the dings in the wall from repeatedly missing the tight corners while pushing the wheelchair. It may not work very well, but it ain’t broke either.