muscleatrophy

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My best friend

This guy right here has saved me several times and has seen me through eight surgeries and over a decade of chronic nerve pain. #dog #ChronicPain #muscleatrophy

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At what point should I start using a wheelchair?

So I have a great deal of muscle atrophy in my legs from Charcot Marie Tooth and it’s been getting noticeably worse over the past five or so years, leading to increasing levels of pain in my legs from walking, meaning can I walk less, and lose more muscle, and on and on. Even physical therapy is pretty much just to keep range of motion in my ankles.
At this point, 12 years since my diagnosis, the prospect of getting out of bed is daunting. Every step I take is weighed against how much more pain I’ll be in if I stay on my feet that much longer. Even walking to the bathroom gets put off until it really can’t be anymore. I live with my parents and sister so I have help, but my life outside the house is pretty much nothing because if walking down the hall too many times leaves me bedridden, going out and walking around is impossible.
I do have a wheelchair that I use for the very rare outing, usually with my family, because I also have muscle atrophy in my arms and nerve damage in my hands making in hard to push myself for more than a minute or so on flat groud and impossible on an incline, so I have to have people to push me. Because of this, I’d need a power wheelchair. It’s always been inevitable that one day I’d need one, but now that that day is getting a lot closer: at what point do I actually have to start seriously looking into buying one? If walking is causing me this much pain, should I just give in? My house is small enough I’d probably use my manual chair inside but I don’t want to start doing that until I have a power chair so I don’t just make it even harder for myself to leave the house. #Wheelchair #Wheelchairs #WheelchairUser #muscleatrophy #mobility

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