Sleeping On The Couch

I slept on the couch last night. I didn't mean to sleep on the couch. I didn't want to sleep on the couch. I just had to sleep on the couch, at least until Chris woke up.

My friend Chris Gordon was accompanying me home on Saturday, making the long haul from Vancouver to Calgary. We arrived at my apartment at around 1:00 AM. Chris was up fairly early on Sunday and I slept until nearly noon. Then we set about making a lasagna for dinner. That meant I spent most of the day in my manual wheelchair, cutting vegetables, making sauce, preparing the lasagna. Chris helped a great deal as well, slicing cheese, assisting with the sauce and assembly.

By the time dinner rolled around, and rolled right on by, I was exhausted. I needed to rest, so I transferred from my wheelchair to the couch. This is a simple downhill transfer; no assistance required. I just slide out of my wheelchair and onto the couch. Once in, I settled for the evening. Chris did a terrific job of getting me everything I wanted.

We watched the movie "Patton", after which Chris decided he was tired. He went to bed and I stayed up to watch a few episodes of "Aquarius" on Netflix. At about 11:30 PM, I decided I was tired too, and it was bedtime for me. So I reached for my transfer board, and discovered that it wasn't there. I had left it in the front hall when we unloaded the truck on Saturday night.

Without the transfer board, I cannot make the uphill transfer from the couch to my wheelchair. It is a lift of about 3 inches, much more than I can do these days. Nor can I simply pull myself up; I am no longer strong enough to do that. So without the transfer board, I was stuck on the couch. Now you might think I would have yelled to wake Chris up and get him out of bed to get me my transfer board. But remember, he had spent the whole evening getting stuff for me. I just felt bad about waking him up.

So I slept on the couch. In the morning when he woke up, he saw my post on Facebook about needing the transfer board, and appeared magically beside me, board in hand. I transferred and he asked if I was going to stay up. "No. I'm going to bed" was my reply. Even the two more hours of sleep before homecare makes a difference to me. I abandoned him to his devices and departure. I slept right through it. I missed saying good bye. But at least I wasn't sleeping on the couch anymore.