My Life so far... 

Thank you for visiting Positively Disabled. This site has been created and written by Ellen Lundquist. Ellen is a 58-year-old woman with advanced MS. She currently lives in a 24-hour care facility. She has been there since November of 2022, and before that she was in a different care facility for fifteen months.

Ellen spent the first years of her life as an able-bodied person before she was diagnosed with MS at age 36. Three years after that she began using a manual wheelchair. In 2019 she had deteriorated to the point where she qualified for a power wheelchair. She has experienced nearly all of the typical symptoms of MS except pain and cognitive dysfunction. Her age and her cognitive abilities make her an atypical patient uniquely qualified to write a blog about living in a care facility.  

Before she was institutionalized, she had been living on Maui for about sixteen years. For the last three years, she had lost the ability to transfer independently and had helpers in the morning and the evening. Once she got to the point that she couldn’t be alone for seven or eight hours during the day, she contracted Covid and stayed in the hospital for three weeks. The Covid resolved in a week, but she could not afford helpers at home anymore. Her mother and sister lived in Honolulu, and as she could not live alone, she needed to change islands. It took about fifteen months for a place to open up so she could transfer to Oʻahu.

While she was living alone, she learned many tips and tricks to pass on to others in a similar situation. As much as she wanted to share her knowledge, she also wanted to share her good attitude. Her mother had gotten remarried in the early ’80s when Ellen was about fifteen, and one of her older stepbrothers had gone through cancer when he was a teenager, years before she knew him. He was a very positive person, and she believed that had a direct effect on your health.

So in 1996 when half her body went numb and the doctors thought she had a brain tumor, she didn’t freak out completely. Wait until they have a diagnosis, she thought. That wouldn’t come for another six years.

Stories from my life and the lessons I have learned will also be a part of this site. Oops! I forgot I was writing in the third person. You knew it was me all along, didn’t you? Really, this introduction has not showcased how entertaining and completely hilarious I can be. And gosh darn insightful. I’m a freaking treasure trove. Not always appropriate, but you get the idea.

Let’s have fun!