I Am Ormi...My Life in a Nutshell.

What is my life like?
Well I live at the seashore and that's very cool. It's lovely. It's a privilege really and I do love it.

My home is very tiny. You know the kind of house with the old fashioned little closets with the 24
inch doors on them and room for 3 items on the rack? Yeah, that kind of house.

Getting dressed is a joke sometimes
but only sometimes

There is one bathroom that once accommodated 5 people, a small oddly laid out living room and 3 little bedrooms on a rather big piece of land surrounded by the bay, ocean and pine barren forests.

The other part of me is that I am over 85% disabled due to spinal problems.  My spine is held together with titanium and I can't lift, twist or bend over but as a bionic person I CAN leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop speeding freight trains with one look.
I was in a wheel chair for a few years but about 4 years ago I had spinal surgery to fix my spine.
It only cost nearly 2 million dollars :).
I spent two months in a rehabilitation center to work on walking and standing up etc. and now I am a pro and you can't tell I am disabled at all when I walk.

 But having a fused spine means when I drop something it stays dropped until someone rescues me. I
have reachers but they don't handle a lot of things. For books and larger items I lift them with a long handled dust pan. When I drop the reacher I have my own ways to pick it up with my feet.  I am resourceful!

a tiny disaster

To look at me you would not know that I am disabled and that brings its own problems as people expect more than I can deliver.  Dropping something in the stores can be devastatingly embarrassing as people look at me as if  "Why doesn't she pick it up?"
I used to just turn red, but, now, I ask for help and most people are very happy to help me out.
It also means I can't  get things off low shelves. At home I just pull things out and make a mess but you can't make messes in the store, they frown on that. ;)

Preppy barrel knot for shoes

Can't tie my shoes, so I use the preppy knot.

I can't vacuum a floor.  I can't lift much over 5 lbs, and you would be astonished to know how many times you twist your body in a day. Even  putting dishes from the sink to the counter requires a slight twist of the body. I have to completely turn my whole body to do it. Making a braid in the back of your hair requires a slight back bend I can't do. I can't get in and out of bed like you do either but its no big deal.
 I can't reach things in the bottom cabinet and reachers just really don't solve the problem most of the time.
I make up ways of course but they don't always work out either and little catastrophes happen.
I sort of pitch my  pots and pans into the cabinet.
A chair dragged over to the refrigerator helps me access my bottom freezer.
I can't put on my own socks and forget panty hose.. impossible! I do use a little tool for socks but most of the time I don't bother. Too much trouble.
I spend a lot of time in the day cleaning up my  messes and dropped items and spend a lot of time doing things you take for granted.
To get my linens or clothing out I have to use a chair  to reach the bottom drawers.
My bottom dresser drawers are pretty much useless to me.
But I survive and nicely too and my home is more orderly and clean than most able bodied people. It just takes me more time, that's all.

Able bodied people do not get the thrill and joy of finishing a job that took you an hour longer than most people only to have it all fall down on you and need to be done again! What fun! Well, not true really but it just seems it happens to me a lot.

I used to ice skate very well. I played baseball on a team throughout my  earlier life. I danced for 18 years. I rode horses and did barrel racing.  I was a sprinter and very fast too. I could do hurdles and used to leap over park benches on the way to school.   I walked miles with my kids to and from school.
I built my own driveway, digging it in and leveling it and the sidewalk too and I built my big pond, no small feat.  I loved the ocean and could surf and swim. Now I can't go into the surf as it's too rough for me. I was very athletic, very active.
One lady at physical therapy was crying and asked me what she was going to do now that her athletic life was over. I told her she'd have a whole new life open  up for her with a lot of character building, patience learning and a good sense of humor coming her way. She will find other things to do.
As Pamela says, windows open up.  I no longer wonder why people do or don't do things because I learned that you never know until you walk in their shoes!

This little cartoon is a joy for me since it shows my life in a nutshell and in an amusing way.
I am Ormi.. though I am not pink really and my nose is pretty small  and my ears are not so floppy.
But trying to do somethings makes me look like Ormi or a contestant on the old show Beat the Clock.
You know how that went right? Or you've seen it on YouTube. There were old episodes on a cable channel that I found lots of  fun.
"Contestant one, you have 60 seconds to lift this book and place it on the shelf using only your feet and you cannot twist or bend at all! NOW....GO!" 
I thought you might enjoy this peek into my life.  I laugh so hard when I see this because it is me! (only I am not as cute as Ormi)

Oh by the way, my insurance covered every single dollar of my surgery except for pain pills after I came home that cost me 40 Cents. Woo Hoo!