The Quarantine Chronicles

For most people without children quarantine may be uneventful and redundant however, that is not the case for me. I am a woman with cerebral palsy who uses both a push wheelchair and an electric wheelchair, depending on what I’m doing or where I am going. I am also intuitive and a cancer survivor. All of these factors contribute to what is now referred to as the Quarantine Chronicles.

During the first week of quarantine I saw that chicken pot pies were half off and buy one get one free, I thought I had hit a bit of a jackpot because I liked chicken pot pie, I could get several for a good price and they last a longtime in the freezer. I was wrong, it was not a good idea at all! I don’t know what kind of supernatural phenomenon is happening behind the closed door of my freezer with the pot pies but they are multiplying at an alarming rate. Maybe pot pies have never gotten this kind of attention before, or maybe one box of pot pies never encountered another box of pot pies long enough to see what could happen, all I know is, I originally recall buying three boxes and it just seems like they’re taking over my entire freezer! No matter how many I seem to eat there always seems to be another one. Do not fall for the seemingly brilliant opportunity to purchase chicken pot pies at a reduced price and get one box free. The mere thought of a pot pie makes me nauseous this many weeks in.

Then there’s the issue of the freezer, my freezer is like the majority of freezers on top of my refrigerator making it more difficult from a wheelchair to access any area of the freezer other than the door. At this point, you might be thinking what’s the big deal? Put as much as you can in the pockets on the door, this is exactly what I did, the problem is, now the door of the freezer is so heavy it naturally wants to close on its own and as I try to navigate and stretch in different wheelchair yoga poses to reach the rest of the freezer I have to simultaneously try to avoid an oncoming concussion or being knocked out cold by the ominous freezer door. It is official the freezer and I are arch enemies not just because of the door dangers but no matter how much care I take trying to strategically stack and delicately place items into the freezer, every time I open the door something comes cascading out at me like it is being thrown on purpose by an all star baseball pitcher and of course, whatever item aims itself at me is never the item that I was hoping to retrieve at the time, and not surprisingly, it tends to more often than not to be a very heavy box of pot pies. In fact, I have had to lift so many pot pie boxes back up into my freezer that I can honestly say, I have suffered a quite painful rotator cuff injury of my left shoulder. After dodging multiple freezer door collisions and enduring my shoulder pain for far too long yesterday I resorted to tossing items with all my strength into the back of the freezer, while my sweet little ever so loyal cat, Magic, watched cautiously wondering why mom was violently throwing items into the big cold box aka my freezer. The woes of pot pies and the freezer have gotten me a little bit ahead of myself.

Yesterday, after several days of waiting, I was able to get groceries delivered which I was extremely grateful for and as many of you know, currently, they are dropping the items off at the door. It is not typically easy to pick up heavy items off the ground from the sitting position of a wheelchair, my arms are pretty strong but there are other logistical problems when picking things up from a wheelchair. Therefore, I text the grocery delivery person and said, “please do not make each individual bag too heavy because I am in a wheelchair and it is harder for me to pick up a bag from the ground if it is too heavy”. “Sure thing,” was his reply. After bearing witness to the shopping bags that he considered not heavy, I have had to come to the conclusion that he must be a heavy weight body builder because each bag was so heavy I could only take one at a time and I couldn’t even lift it to the designated kitchen counter. I was pleased at the sheer accomplishment of getting each bag just inside the house so at least everything was in an air-conditioned environment and worry about putting items away after I recovered from this Semi-spontaneous quarantine cardio session called “Grocery Retrieval” as luck would have it, for the first time in weeks, I was able to secure a 24 pack of bottled water ironically, this happened on the week when delivery people are required to leave groceries at your door. Trying to pick up a 24 pack of bottled water from a wheelchair is a daunting task, the problem is not so much the weight of the item as I mentioned but more so that it is cumbersome and there’s no proper way to grasp the packaging. When I attempted to pick up the water my wheelchair tilted forward like a wild bull trying to buck me off and at the same time a neighbor from across the parking lot of my apartment complex was anxiously watching all of this transpire just over the door jam of my front door, before long she yelled, “oh my God I wish so badly I could help you but my husband has been sniffling... I cut her off mid-sentence in that instant, like a hawk with laser precision , I sat straight up and replied, “No no no stay away, just do me a favor and watch in case I do fall out you can call for help.” “OK , she hollered back reassuringly.

Surviving my wheelchair transform into a bull two times I decided to open the package and remove some of the bottles to reduce the weight . This tactic eventually worked, as my neighbor dutifully watched like she promised. I did bare witness to the casualties of four perfectly sealed brand new Zephyrhills water bottles and as a result, I am going to contact the Zephyrhills company and suggest that they create some type of handle on these water bottle packages and provide an alternative pack of 12 also with proper handles for those of us that may find a typical 24 pack a hazard to our health and safety.

I am not working this hard to survive a pandemic and of course cancer to be taken out by a 24 pack of Zephyrhills water bottles that is for certain!