Published: July 01, 2008 08:44 am         

In These Otsego Hills

For those who have not seen us of late and thus do not know, we hasten to point out that it is quite obvious to anyone who does see us that we are dealing with rather limiting mobility issues. Our ability to stand or walk for any length of time has been seriously curtailed. We no longer can stand up straight.

We do not do well with uneven surfaces. Having to wait in line tends to be torturous. Any number of people have asked us what we have done to ourselves now. And quite frankly, we have no answer for that question. We don’t actually think we have done anything. In fact, other than being born, we have no explanation. Last fall we realized that our ability to get around was declining. We visited our prime care doctor who ordered an MRI of our lower back. We were then referred to a neurosurgeon who declined to operate, referring us instead to the Bassett Spine Clinic on Railroad Avenue. As a result of that visit we were given 12 injections in our lower back over the course of four visits to the Bassett facility in Herkimer. We were then referred to physical therapy, which included a referral for pool therapy. We have resumed deep walk jogging at the gym and regularly carry a cane, of which we have many.

Nonetheless, our ability to stand or walk for any length of time is still seriously curtailed. We still cannot stand up straight. We continue to not do well with uneven surfaces. And having to wait in line still tends to be torturous. We will, of course, continue to work on these issues. But we do not guarantee success. And unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion that, in any number of instances, our lack of mobility bothers others much more than it bothers us.

We have had complete strangers offer to help us with the stairs. We must admit that we had little idea of exactly what sort of help they might have had in mind. Short of carrying us up or down the stairs, we can’t imagine what might be done to make our trips up or down the stairs any easier. Of course, we don’t think stairs are an issue for us. We suspect, however, that others find them to be an issue as we tend to be extremely slow in our navigation of any steps, especially if they do not have a handrail. And, if the stairs are narrow we do tend to hog the entire width as we need the space to manage the steps. In fact, whenever possible, we are considering taking the elevator instead of the steps so as to not impede anyone else’s progress.

A number of people have pointed out to us how limiting our current state of mobility must be. And while they are indeed correct, we must say that we never particularly appreciate our limitations being pointed out to us. After all, it is not as if we didn’t already know about them. And, in fact, we would readily concur that they are any number of things we can no longer do. And while we suspect that they are people who if they found themselves in our position would be greatly upset, we have chosen to take the position that while there are things we can no longer do, we didn’t like doing them anyway so it doesn’t really matter. In fact, we find the fact that we can no longer do any outside work on our property a huge blessing. When it comes to weeds, we have decided that if they are green they can stay.

Of course, we are not so cavalier as to imply that there are not things which we wish we could accomplish with more ease. And we do not particularly like making decisions on what local events we might attend based on what we perceive as our ability to participate in them. And yet realistically that is exactly what we have to do. And we also have to pace ourselves so that we don’t attempt too many activities on any given day. We have discovered that the more tired we are, the worse the mobility becomes. And yet, if we were asked, we think we would say that in terms of coping, our lack of mobility is a distant second to our ability to deal with noise. Now that is our real problem. In fact, we think our dislike of noise limits us much more than our lack of mobility. In fact, we make any number of decisions based on avoiding noise. We absolutely hate the level of noise which assaults us on a daily basis. When we get out of our car to pump liquid gold into our gas tank, we do not appreciate music blaring from an outdoor loudspeaker. We don’t like to eat in a restaurant where the diners are forced to raise their voices to be heard over the background music. And we certainly are not in favor of the fact that the entire world has become one big telephone booth. It all quite makes our hair hurt. Consequently, we can but hope that the next person who asks us about our back does it quietly.

In closing, while we think there is little we can do about the noise factor, other than try to avoid it, we do think our difficulties with mobility has given us one more windmill at which to tilt. We have discovered that distribution and placement of handicapped parking places is not particularly helpful. In fact, within the village, we think one of the biggest problems has to be the handicapped parking available at the Village Library Building. Ablebodied parkers have parking options of 15 minutes, two hours and all day. Handicapped parkers, however, have been allotted one halfhour parking space. We have checked our mobility limitations and have come to the conclusion that lobbying for improved handicapped parking is definitely within our realm of possibilities as long as we don’t need to park near the Village Library Building to do it.

We remain,
In these Otsego hills,
The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y. 13326, by telephone at 547- 8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny.rr.com.