Notes from John and Elvis

John is a 44 year old with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.  He is confined to a motorized wheelchair and has extensive muscle weakness from the neck down.  But this doesn’t keep him down.  John is truly an inspiration for anyone with physical disabilities.  He works in an office setting for a large hotel in Orlando, Florida; he is both independent and very outgoing and he was blessed with a fantastic sense of humor. 

In May 2005, John became the recipient of Elvis, one of our two year old golden retrievers. 

Elvis has changed John’s life in so many ways, his attitude at home and work has improved, he has more independence, he feels more confident going out in public places, but most of all the two have become “best friends.” 

John uses a voice activated software program which allows him to send emails and keep us updated on what is going on in his and Elvis’ life.  Because these emails make us laugh and sometimes they bring tears to our eyes, we thought it would be an inspiration to others if we shared one of John’s (with his approval) emails every now and then with our web site readers.

February 5, 2006
Subject:  John is Back

Hi All,

I figured I would start off with a group message giving the highlights of my vacation.

I returned home from my cruise vacation yesterday.  I have to tell you before I give you some of the details that I had a good time.  That might be difficult to understand when I tell you some of the wonderful event’s that occurred throughout my cruise vacation starting from day one.  But I really did have a good time.

My vacation started a week ago, Saturday, January 28th.  Transportation from Orlando to Miami was on a bus with a company (whose name we can’t mention.)   This was my fourth time using them to get down to Miami.  This is the third time that I’ve gotten to the pickup location and the bus came and the driver was never notified that I was in a motorized wheelchair.  He was not happy about seeing my wheelchair at all.  First, he had to make telephone calls to confirm.  Confirm what?  I guess that I was in a wheelchair.  He now attempted to open the lift on the bus.  (Yes, thank God the bus that came did have the wheelchair lift.)  He couldn’t get it to work.  It took forever and he was getting more and more aggravated.  He finally got us in the bus and throughout the trip he let everyone know at each additional stop that I was the reason he was late.  He was the rudest bus driver I have ever seen.  It took over seven hours to get from Orlando to Miami.  (I have already written management at this company.)

Once on board, things were OK.  I took Elvis with me and he was Mr. Popularity.  This was fine by me because it caused a lot of interaction with other guests for me also.  The first night I started to have a sore throat.  I looked for the Tylenol that I brought but couldn’t find any.  The next day I still had the sore throat so I decided to go down to medical and get some Tylenol.  I went down there and the nurse said that I should see the doctor.  At first I didn’t want to and then I thought to myself, “self, if this is something more, get rid of it quickly since this is only the second day of the cruise.”  Well, I was checked by the doctor and after listening to my chest with that stethoscope, the doctor wanted x-rays.  Didn’t realize that this was going to be a portion of my vacation but I agreed.  Found out I have pneumonia in my left lung.  Kind of advanced because shortly after that I was getting antibiotics intravenously, I was out of my chair and on the hospital bed and the nurses were trying to get secretion out of my lungs.  In between all of this stuff going on they stuck this mask in front o