Wheelin' through life with Ralph and Patti

Our trip Friday to the doctor's office ~
Getting my mother out of the house and situated in the van was not easy. I set up the portable ramp and Ralph gave us verbal instructions. Lots of them. He's a true expert at this stuff!
I brought the chair down the ramp backwards to the driveway, and she rode up the lift on the van and rolled in. So far, so good.
The hard part was when she had to get out of the wheelchair and onto the bench seat in back. Eventually she got herself onto the seat, using baby steps. It took a while.

We got to the commerce park filled with lots of medical buildings. Never been there before and of course we lumbered up the sidewalk ramp to the door to the wrong building. Turned out it was the next one over. Ralph was not pleased, and expressed that displeasure in the office. Oh well.
Nice people, fellow patients, held doors for us.
We had to go back through the parking lot and out on the street (no sidewalk) to the next building, with Ralph leading the way in the wheelchair.
You don't think these offices had power doors to make it easier for patients who were arriving (by the boatload I might add) in wheelchairs, using walkers, canes and generally limping? Of course not. That would be sensible. And the sidewalks going to the doors were uphill. Try being alone using a chair and reaching for the door as you feel yourself going backward. Even with the brakes on, I wouldn't want to experience that feeling.

I cannot adequately describe what it must have looked like. Ralph motoring along ahead of us, me pushing my mother in a manual chair and she holding up her feet, because we forgot the foot rests. She doesn't use them in the house and it was her first time using the wheelchair outside the house.
I tried to avoid the pot holes, but hit one and she screamed. Then she apologized. It could have been worse. It could have been raining or snowing. It was chilly but the sun was out.
The doctor was kind and reassuring. Nothing much can be done except to let the healing process take place.

~ and now a chuckle, taken from the e-mail bag:

Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, "I must tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent."

"Thank God," said an elderly nun at the back. "I'm so tired of chardonnay."