It was a good year ago now that Brady lost so much more mobility and became fully physically dependant on his wheelchair. Losing his ability to stand and walk has been challenging to say the least, but like so many of you say to us, he has handled it with so much grace, as well as a whole lot of dark humour. There have been lots of aspects of our life that have changed in this last year surrounding Bradys mobility, and I haven’t hashed them all out on the blog, of course, but I do want to share about one today.
Remember this picture?
Brady sent it to me from his drive home from Edmonton the other week, and I cried when I saw it. Pumping gas has been an unexpectedly loaded battle. Let’s talk about it.
The last time Brady filled up was really, really hard. It was over a year ago, when he was still able to stand but there was definitely something wrong. On this particular day, Brady brought Rowan to parkour in the evening. All the seating is up in a mezzanine, and stairs were almost impossible at that point, so he dropped him off and went to go fill up the van rather than staying to watch. He drove to Costco and got out to fill up. And it might’ve been ok except he dropped his credit card. And when he bent down to retrieve it, it got away from him. And he fell. And he couldn’t get back up. His legs just would not do it.
He ended up being hauled off the ground by two older ladies. They were so kind. They helped him back to the van. Hiked his pants up. Made sure he was stable.
The most discouraging. The most vulnerable. He was so so sad.
He told me about it on the phone later. He knew I needed to know. But he knew it would be devastating news. My heart absolutely broke for him in that moment. He assured me he was ok now that he had his cry, and we would move forward.
Which we did.
But filling up became an issue. Of course he could get out and do it, but it would be the whole operation of getting his chair out of the van, transferring into it, being in that tight space between the pumps and the vehicle, waiting in whatever weather, finishing up and transferring back into the van, dragging the chair in after him. So it takes a lot of energy, of which he has less since that last big change in mobility. So we looked for a different way. Full serve is cool but not when the tap on your card doesn’t work. Brady found himself giving his PIN to random gas guys, which doesn’t feel great. Especially with the amount we drive, he was going back regularly and people were remembering him. Not that there was ever a sign of impropriety. But still, its not what you want. Eventually, we settled on Brady keeping some cash on hand. That way he can just ask for $50 and go on his merry way. Its not the ideal, of course, but it works, and we don’t require ideal. Above ideal, we’d like independence for Brady, and this makes that possible.
Seeing him fill up with gas himself for the first time in over a year was incredible for my heart, and his as well. Not that he couldn’t have before. Because he could have. But there was some underlying pain there, for obvious reasons, and he didn’t want to. Something about this felt like it brought a little healing. He chose to do it himself, and was successful 💪
I think I need to do an update post about Brady soon. It’s been a while. But this feels like a really nice place to start 💜