RODNEY ROLL!

For weeks now my balance has ranged from comical (picture a baby trying to balance on its feet while ignoring a load in its diaper) to downright dangerously precarious.

Up go the steroids (and all their ugly little side-effects) – but still not a high enough dosage to actually have more than minimal impact on the drunken stagger. But now I have Rodney Roll.

Weeks ago, I would have announced that has joyfully as telling you I had to get ugly black lace up orthopedic shoes. But after they tortured me with a cane at rehab and then let me try a Rodney, I’m here to say that yesterday, when Heather brought Rodney home from the Red Cross, I moved around more in one day than I have for the past month. I can walk a normal human adult speed! I can walk backwards. I can turn corners! I felt like I had lost a 100 pound weight off my shoulders. I was downright cheery.

I’d had no idea how much this particular disability was depressing me until it eased.

Here’s to simple, well-designed technology. Let’s hear it for oar locks and simple computer applications that don’t require days of learning curve. Let’s hear it for wheel barrows, good strong tools, my little triangular bead pick up thing.