Question 1

Can I work as a personal assistant even if I have no previous experience?

Accepted Answer

Experience is, of course, useful because it can help shorten and overall ease the process of adapting to this work. On the other hand, based on previous experience, you may have learned procedures that will be difficult for you to unlearn if I need you to do them differently. In that case, they can significantly complicate the process of adapting to assistance work with me.
Therefore, I say in advance that no experience is necessary. On the contrary, sometimes I prefer when my new assistant has no previous experience, because they do not try to apply something they were used to in their previous work.
During the first meeting of a potential assistant with me, one of my current assistants is also present, who will gladly explain and demonstrate the individual tasks to the candidate. So there is no need to fear that I will throw you into deep water without teaching you how to swim.
I have extensive experience with people who are helping me for the first time and I know how uncertain they can feel during this first meeting. Overcoming their initial fears is usually the hardest part, but a good experience is then the best way to get through everything else.
It is interesting to hear people's retrospective views on their first beginnings with me, when they started without any previous experience. Today we laugh about it together and appreciate that we went for it. However, this is preceded by a long process of situations that were not exactly easy at the time. But everything is a new experience, an enrichment, not only for the new assisting person, but certainly for me as well. Therefore: it is not important that you have previous practice. I am used to and prepared for the fact that newcomers have no experience with assistance work, I expect it in advance and always gladly explain everything.
I enjoy meeting new people, even though constantly adapting to new personalities and habits is considerably demanding. It requires patience, which I have cultivated over the years, as well as the ability of psychological work and adaptation to various personalities, temperaments, and cultural habits of the many new people who constantly enter my life.
On the other hand, it is also necessary for the assistant to respect my habits, my personality, and my way of doing individual tasks. Mutual tolerance is the foundation of every relationship - whether it is a work relationship or a friendly one.

Question 2

What does the term assistance mean? What will my job entail if I decide to do it?

Accepted Answer

Assistance is a very individual service based on the specific needs of the disadvantaged person. Every disadvantaged person is independent or dependent in different tasks. And it is precisely on this that the help they need depends.
For a clearer picture of what I need, I will describe a few basic tasks that I cannot do without assistance:
- dressing and undressing - this means dressing in the morning and undressing into pajamas in the evening, also dressing/undressing every time I use the toilet, changing before going out into outdoor clothes (warmer ones in winter) + after returning home back into home clothes, and if necessary, also dressing/undressing during the day when entering indoor spaces, e.g., during an outing in a shopping center, cinema, etc.,
- help with the toilet - (approx. 4-5 times a day) help involves dressing and undressing again, transferring from the wheelchair to the toilet seat and back. This task is most often done during shift changes, when two assisting persons are present at the same time and can help each other. If the conditions are accessible, one person can manage the transfers (if we are at home, they can use the lifting device), if not (e.g., out in the city), help from another assisting person is needed. The procedure for a new assisting person is part of their training,
- showering and bathing - this mainly involves transferring into and out of the shower (or into and out of the bathtub). We often use the moments when assistance shifts are changing so they can help each other with this task (it is faster and easier), but if another person is not available for assistance, nothing happens - an easy-to-use lifting device is always available. During hygiene itself, I need help washing my back, hair, and feet, then drying with a towel, wrapping in a bath towel, transporting to bed, applying cream, and dressing,
- moving outside - i.e., moving around the city, or wherever needed. I have an electric wheelchair on which I move independently and only need an escort. I usually use accessible public transport. If the assistant has a driving license, they can drive my accessible car, which we mainly use for intercity transport (business trips, excursions, vacations, visits...),
- household work - cooking (I can cook, so if you cannot, you will just assist me while cooking) or reheating food, washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning, mopping the floor, dusting, watering flowers, occasionally running out to buy something (I do big shopping together with assistance), etc.
In addition, I need help with exercises that I regularly practice and always explain in advance.
These are the most important tasks that I cannot do by myself and need assistance with.

Question 3

How does your personal assistance system work?

Accepted Answer

As for my assistance system, it is a bit more complicated than can be said in one sentence. First of all, I do not have one specific person who assists me. Various people help me, taking turns 24 hours a day - so when someone leaves, someone else always takes over. You could say they pass the baton at my place. The time each person spends with me is up to them - by agreement with me. It can be a few hours (minimum 3) and it can also be half a day or a night. There are often days when 6-7 people take turns with me within 24 hours. The important thing is that the shifts cover 24 hours, 7 days a week.
I use an electronic calendar where each person with access rights can see how long a shift is and also when there is a gap and I have nobody (i.e., I am currently looking for someone for that time). Each person who receives access rights enters their name and the time when they want to come and when they want to leave. This is how I secure assistance for 24 hours at least a few days (ideally at least a week) in advance.
New people who do not yet have the access password can arrange the time of assistance with me during their first visit or first shifts, or write to me. It is possible to choose a shift even, for example, a month in advance. Over time, when these people gain experience, they receive the right to sign up in the electronic calendar themselves.
Assistance visits can be regular, always at the same time, or always at a different time. The biggest mistake an assistant can make is not to show up at all. Not coming to me is not the same as not coming to a friend's - I will, for example, remain lying in bed in the morning and cannot move. If there is no one to help me, it will be a very traumatizing experience for me.

Question 4

Will I assist you right from the first visit? Will I be left alone with you right away?

Accepted Answer

Definitely not. During the first visit, we talk with the potential assistant about how things work at my place, what their expectations are, and what mine are. First of all, it is about seeing each other, assessing mutual sympathy, finding out whether we even want to cooperate, clarifying uncertainties, and thus avoiding potential misunderstandings. For me personally, communication and my own 'assessment' of the potential assistant are important. The feeling that a given person evokes in me matters a lot, because I will have to trust this person almost unconditionally. Over the past 21 years of my work in securing my own assistance, hundreds and hundreds of people have 'passed through my hands.' I can therefore say that I have more than rich experience with this personnel work. Half an hour of talking with a candidate for personal assistance tells me much more about them than they even suspect. I am also interested in why they decided on assistance and what led them to it. The reasons are always different and people's paths are unpredictable.
I never, as long as it is at all possible, stay completely alone with a person who came for the first visit. During the first visits, I only familiarize these people with how I am used to doing things and how they should perform individual tasks so that it is safe and effective for me. It is a minor training. A person becomes a 'full-fledged' assistant at the moment when they are confident that they can stay alone with me and handle truly everything they need to handle.

Question 5

Will I have to do and handle all the tasks?

Accepted Answer

Every person is completely different. Some may not want to do all tasks, but for me it is really important to know this from the beginning and decide whether I even want to accept such a person. Some would like to but simply cannot handle certain tasks, or cannot perform them for health reasons. Getting to know each specific person is therefore one of my many duties. It is I who will have to know with the greatest possible accuracy how much I can rely on a given person, which tasks will be easier for them and which harder, how long a given task will take us together, or which tasks are better left to someone else. Only when a new assistant is confident that they can already stay alone with me and handle everything they need to handle do they become a 'full-fledged' assistant.
The 'trial' period lasts different lengths of time for each person and very much depends on the frequency of their visits. The more often they practice the given tasks, the faster they feel at home in them, so to speak, until they become automatic and in their own way natural. Some manage most things the second time, some only the fifth time... Some decide that they would rather not do it at all and never come back. And with some, I decide that for some reason I do not want to or cannot accept them as an assistant.

Question 6

Can I choose assistance even if I have many obligations (work, school...) and won't be able to dedicate time to assistance constantly?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I am looking for and fully welcome such people too. As I already mentioned, every new candidate for assistance has the full right to determine, by agreement with me, the frequency and length of their shifts. Each person performs assistance with me only to the extent they determine themselves, and which does not burden them. I am not looking for someone who would spend 24 hours a day with me - on the contrary, I need assistants who can find a few hours occasionally, or part of a day, or a whole day/night only once in a while, e.g., even just twice a month. The more people, the better - the less I am dependent on one person and the more people can rotate so that it does not exhaust anyone. It is great if this work helps not only me but also enriches the person who helps me.
A little math easily suggests that if I find, for example, 6 people who come even just twice a month for 4 hours, thanks to them I can survive two whole days every month. If they come regularly like this, it is also a great help, because having certainty for even just two days a month is better than having constant uncertainty. If I find 30 people who come for 4 hours just twice a month, that fully covers 10 days a month.
Logically, the more people who can assist me, the less time one person will have to spend with me. This is especially appreciated by assistants who often come to me despite their heavy time commitments only because they 'have to,' because no one else was found. They care about me so much that they will not allow me to be left without help. So there are never enough willing people.
However, I am by no means looking for one person who would be with me constantly or the overwhelming majority of the time. This rule has several reasons. One of the most important is the so-called burnout syndrome, or 'mutual cabin fever,' and at the same time the feeling of dependence on one single person who, of course, is not invulnerable. They too can drop out at any time. If something happens to them and they suddenly cannot continue assisting, there is minimal chance of suddenly finding a replacement. If one is not urgently found, my very existence is threatened.

Question 7

Can anyone perform the service of personal assistance? Do you have special requirements for such a person?

Accepted Answer

A personal assistant must be a person who wants to serve a severely physically disadvantaged person, or wants to lend such a person their time, their hands, and their legs. They must do this work selflessly, which does not mean they will not be paid - it means they should not set conditions like: 'I will come for assistance if you go to town with me,' or: 'I will come to assist you if I can attend to my school/work tasks at the same time.'
Of course, a certain agreement is possible if the person using assistance agrees to it. We can, for example, agree that if there is nothing left in the apartment for assistance to do without my participation as the user, we will create a productive working environment together and quietly attend to our study obligations. However, this is not something the assistant can determine. The decision about what activities will be done within the scope of personal assistance is always made only by its user. The assistant must keep in mind that they are always the 'hands and legs' of the physically disadvantaged person, not their brain. They may suggest, but not command; they may recommend, but must respect if the user decides otherwise.
A personal assistant must therefore be a tolerant, respectful, helpful, and also patient person, because many tasks take a person in a wheelchair much longer than a person with full mobility. Respecting privacy is a given, as a person with a physical disadvantage using personal assistance has substantially less of it than anyone else.
The assistant should also not 'raid' the user's refrigerator. They procure their own food - shared meals are only possible by mutual agreement. As for physical attributes, personal assistance should be performed by a person in good health, so there is no risk of their sudden physical or mental collapse. It must be kept in mind that the severely physically disadvantaged person depends on them. The assistant must not be afraid of minor physical exertion - an assistant who cannot help me get to the toilet or turn me in bed to the other side is of no use to me.
The assistant should be a person young at heart, positive-thinking, non-confrontational, and creating a pleasant work-friendly atmosphere. They should support the user in a positive outlook on the world and not use them as a psychological counseling center for solving their own problems. A clean criminal record goes without saying.

Question 8

Wouldn't it be better for you to have one or two permanent assisting persons?

Accepted Answer

This frequent question is quite difficult and complex to answer. Like everything, permanent assistance has its advantages and disadvantages.
I had a permanent assistant for about one month after my arrival in Prague in September 2002. Today, just as then, I see it as an emergency solution and I would never want it again.
The ADVANTAGE was that I did not have to secure additional days of assistance daily, I did not have to worry about tomorrow, whether the person who promised would actually come; in this sense, it was greater certainty. The assistant got used to me and I to them, they knew what I needed and could do it without much explanation and reminding.
However, there were also many DISADVANTAGES. First of all, you have to hold up a mirror to yourself and ask whether you could endure being with one person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - moreover, if it is not your life partner. (And surely you are not with them constantly, i.e., that many hours a day.) No matter how great a person they are, everything has its limits and a moment comes when you feel what is called cabin fever.
If you are with one person from morning to morning for a week, perhaps after a week during their replacement you will feel almost relief. And not because you haven't become friends with them enough - you simply have a natural need to be with other people too.
Moreover, everyone is human and so it can happen that you argue. Will it be pleasant to want any tasks from this person (even at that very moment)? Try arguing with someone and then immediately ask them for help. You will probably find that it is quite an embarrassing and humiliating feeling. It is therefore good not to spend so much time together that you could get into conflict.
With the assisting person, you have to share truly almost everything - sometimes even what you do not share with your close ones. Whether it is questions of intimate hygiene, listening to your phone calls, access to personal documents, or finances, you may ask yourself with whom you are willing to share what. Do you let friends have access to all your personal things? Probably not, but I have to let my assistants have access to them.
From the above, it is clear that choosing one person for assistance is a difficult thing that requires complete trust. You have to think about this choice very carefully in advance.
However, these are far from all the disadvantages. Another one, for example, is that if you rely on just one or two people and they both fall ill at the same time, break a leg, have to urgently take care of a family member, or urgently travel..., what will happen to you? Will you be able to suddenly rely unconditionally on someone who has not been sufficiently, or at all, trained by your side?
And further: do you think the assistant does not have their own personal life? They too often want to be with someone else.
Last but not least is the financial question - it is hard to find someone who would not go to work or school at all and who would want to be available 24 hours a day to another person for a not very large sum of money. Personal assistance, moreover, still cannot be performed under an employment contract with all employee benefits. Assistants will therefore eventually look for a job where they would have such benefits. If they don't leave me completely, then they will at least significantly reduce the frequency of their shifts with me.

Question 9

Shouldn't assistance be provided to you rather by healthcare professionals?

Accepted Answer

No, nothing like that is necessary. Assistance is a social, not a health service. A severely physically disadvantaged person does not equal a sick person, just as an able-bodied person does not automatically equal a healthy one.
The user of assistance may not need any medical intervention - they need to move freely, have contact with people, and have basic life needs met such as the ability to eat, use the toilet, change body position, or wash... I therefore do not care whether the potential assistant works in healthcare or not. It is irrelevant for this service.

Question 10

Do you need assistance for the whole day?

Accepted Answer

Yes and no. I definitely need assistance for the whole day, but that does not mean one and the same person has to be with me all day. The assistant can always determine how many hours they want to spend with me and how often they want to come.
The person with me can freely go shopping or run somewhere without me. However, before that, they must help me with everything I need, or might need in case of their absence.
Of course, if I am, for example, with friends or working on the computer, I usually do not require the assistant to be right next to me. During that time, they can be somewhere nearby (go shopping, prepare food in the kitchen, clean, be in the laundry room, or if there is really nothing urgent to do, read in the next room, study, etc.).
However, having assistance is generally more important to me than food and drink. Without food, I can survive a day or two, but without assistance, absolutely not.

Question 11

Do you need assistance at night too? If so, can the assistant sleep at your place? What time can they leave in the morning?

Accepted Answer

Yes, I need assistance 24 hours a day, and therefore also at night.
This does not mean that the assistant has to stay awake at my place at night. It means that they leave me the freedom to decide when I want to go to bed and at night they are 'on call,' i.e., they have a working mobile phone turned on, which I can call in case of need, the assistant gets up and comes to help me.
At night, I usually need to be turned to the other side once during sleep. Of course, it may exceptionally happen twice, or I may need help getting to the toilet, which I normally do not use at night, a drink, or to open a window. Life is unpredictable, so I may fall ill, or something unforeseen may simply happen.
As for the morning departure, it depends on the specific need of the assistant to leave in the morning (e.g., for work, school...). The longer they can stay with me in the morning, the better. Ideally, the shift change does not happen before 8 AM. An early morning departure is highly undesirable because it is very difficult to find someone who would get up much earlier in the morning and come to replace the departing person.
What night assistance does with me:
- puts me to bed when I want and need. I am not forced to go to sleep when the last daytime assistant leaves. It is also a sign of personal freedom, which I appreciate especially during school deadlines and submissions,
- turns me to the other side or repositions me during sleep. I do not have to wait in pain until morning. By the way, try sleeping the whole night in one position and waiting until morning for someone to come and help you move, see if you can endure it. I have had to endure it many times in my life...
- even though I normally do not go to the toilet at night, psychology works in such a way that I would need it precisely when I would be alone. You surely know the feeling of needing to go to the toilet but being unable to, and you also know that you cannot wait until morning with that...

Question 12

Can you describe a typical day at your place?

Accepted Answer

First, I must emphasize that my days do not have precise schedules for when to get up, have breakfast, lunch, dinner, shower, go to sleep... Due to the need to adapt to assistance and do tasks according to when each person can, I have lost my so-called internal clock, so I do not wake up at any specific hour on my own.
Basically, we can only talk about the tasks that are done at my place. In the morning, approximately an hour before their departure, the night assistant comes to wake me up, and we exercise for a while (if they can stay longer, we do a longer set; if they have to leave early, a shorter one). Then they sit me up, help me with upper body hygiene, dress my upper body, brush my hair, clean my glasses, and go to open the front door for the morning assistant who is arriving. Together they transfer me to the toilet, dress my lower body, and sit me in the wheelchair. The night assistant leaves, the morning one helps me with face hygiene, makes me breakfast, and if I am going out, gets me ready. If I am at home, I work on the computer during the day or take care of various other things, while assistance makes the bed, washes dishes, takes out the garbage, sweeps, cleans, prepares lunch, etc. There is always something to do in my apartment - clean, do laundry, cook, shop, and also going to the toilet or showering is not a 5-minute thing.
If I go out, the assistant goes with me. I drive an electric wheelchair that does not need to be pushed. However, the assistant helps me with preparation for going out, getting things ready, dressing, locking the apartment and storing the keys, opening doors, calling the elevator, requesting the ramp in the transport vehicle, holding my shoulders on slopes of the wheelchair, e.g., when exiting a transport vehicle or on a crossing so I do not fall forward, during shopping they put goods in the basket, help me with paying, at physiotherapy they help me with transfers to the treatment table, and so on. When I am outside, using the toilet is only possible during shift changes, when two assisting persons briefly meet and help me with it. Assistance therefore most often changes outside near accessible toilets.
Assistance helps me with showering, which takes place most often in the evening approximately every third day. During the shift change, they sit me together on a plastic chair in the shower and prepare the necessary things within my reach. Then the assistant turns on the water for me and leaves me to shower as much as I can manage. When I am done, they come to wash my hair, back, and feet. They dry me, wrap me in a bath towel, and using the lifting device, transport me from the shower to the bed. There they apply cream, dress me, brush my hair, dry my hair, and prepare everything I need for brushing my teeth. And when I wish, they put me to bed.
I usually go to bed quite late. I work well in the evening, so I often take advantage of it. Putting me to bed means a relatively long process from washing to proper positioning (placing me in the needed position) in the bed itself, but the longer someone does it, the faster they usually get. At night, I need to be turned to the other side during sleep.
On weekends and days off, I often have to do things I did not manage during the week. On Sunday, I go to church. After returning, I either cook something at home or we go out to eat somewhere. I rarely go away for the weekend. I go home to Slovakia only about once every 3 months because the journey takes at least 10 hours. However, I love traveling across Europe and usually spend several weeks to months outside Prague in the summer.
It is hard to say in which part of the day the assistance shift is the hardest. It depends more on how each specific person evaluates which tasks. It is also hard to talk about any 'working hours' or exact tasks in individual parts of the day. I usually do not require special technical knowledge and skills, although even this sometimes comes in handy. What I care about most is everyday life and help for me in ordinary things that every person does without being aware of it.

Question 13

How is the personal assistance service paid?

Accepted Answer

As a citizen of the Slovak Republic with a permanent residence in Slovakia, I am entitled to compensation in the form of a personal assistance allowance. Despite the fact that the total monthly amount is higher than what is allocated in the Czech Republic, it is not enough to cover 24-hour assistance. Every day I pay for 21 hours of personal assistance, but only 18 are recognized and reimbursed.
Currently, I offer 150 CZK, or 6.22 EUR per hour. I pay the amount once a month, always at the end of the following month for the past month (e.g., at the end of December for the month of November). The money will come to your bank account.
When considering assistant work, however, you should keep in mind that it cannot be performed within an employment relationship with all employee benefits such as paid vacation, overtime, weekends or nights, and many others. It cannot therefore be considered your main source of income. The work of a personal assistant is not infrequently performed by volunteers as well. So it is often a service performed without claim to payment and is based more on friendship and the desire to help rather than on the effort to earn money. The enrichment in this case is primarily the opportunity to enter the (personal) world of a physically disadvantaged person, to try such help in practice, and to start perceiving the world from a different angle - in short, to gain a new life experience that can one day come in handy for anyone.

Question 14

Can the assistant do personal things while at your place?

Accepted Answer

Coming to assist means helping a person do things they would want to do themselves if they could, but which they cannot manage without help in their given condition. It is assumed that if someone decided to help them in this way, they genuinely want to be helpful, not primarily helpful to themselves. Last but not least, in most cases they are not doing it for free but receive money that the person in the wheelchair could have used more usefully than paying for 'help' that is not help.
Assistance must never set conditions such as: 'I will come for assistance if you go to town with me,' or: 'I will come to assist you if I can attend to my school/work tasks at the same time.' As I already mentioned, a certain agreement is possible if the person using assistance agrees to it, e.g., that if there is nothing left in the apartment for assistance to do without my participation as the user, we will create a productive working environment together and quietly attend to our study obligations. However, this is not something the assistant can determine. The decision about what activities will be done within the scope of personal assistance is always made only by its user.
Many people, however, often mistakenly believe that when they are with me, they have to constantly attend to me. If I had to constantly converse with and attend to every person who is with me, I would be a slave to people and conversations without a minute of silence and privacy. I would have no time for my personal and school obligations, securing assistance which I do completely on my own without the help of agencies, or personal space for myself and people close to me. Every assisting person should realize that they are not the only one who comes to me - before them, someone was already here, and when they leave, someone else will come. I am happy to exchange a few words with everyone, but being with people 24 hours a day is incredibly exhausting. It really needs to be taken into account. If all the tasks in the apartment are done, the person has fulfilled a certain share of assistance work tasks and did not just come here to lie down in the assistance room, i.e., if there really is nothing they could do without my participation, then it is fine if they sit down and are here in case I need something. It is good if they have a book, computer, or something of their own to do during this time, so that I also have space for myself.

Question 15

Has anyone responded to your calls? If you have enough people, does it still make sense for me to start assisting you?

Accepted Answer

I can answer 'yes' to both questions. So far, countless people have contacted me who have assisted me for a shorter or longer time and left. It is good to realize that assistance is always a temporary matter; few people, for various reasons, last more than a few years, most even only half a year or a few months.
That is why new faces are constantly circulating around me - people come and go, only for new ones to arrive. Given that assistance is still not an employment, people can leave from one day to the next, without giving a reason, without a notice period... Even if I had enough people today, I might have too few in a week. One must always be on guard and also have backup people, because anyone can drop out at any time and searching for help in an emergency situation is a real fight for survival. There is simply never enough assistance. And my request for assistance will be valid as long as I live.

Question 16

Does the gender of the person providing personal assistance matter?

Accepted Answer

No, the gender of the assisting person does not matter to me. I could even say that gender is the last thing I would care about. In reality, it is more about the willingness and ability to perform individual tasks. Every potential candidate can read the section where I write about the personal assistance tasks I require. This can also help them answer the question of whether they want to and will perform these tasks.
Basically, it only depends on the specific person, their personality and attitudes, what they are willing to do and how much they want to help me. Not every assistant helps me with everything, whether due to their abilities or the time during which they come to me. In principle, however, every assisting person should be able to perform every basic assistance task.
In my life, countless people of various genders have already helped me and I am used to everything. If someone truly wants this work, they should not hesitate and should definitely contact me! I will be glad.

Question 17

Can I help you with assistance even if I don't live in Prague?

Accepted Answer

In principle, yes, but it is necessary to be in the country where I am at the moment. Although I live most of the year in Prague, my home is in Slovakia, more precisely about 40 km southeast of Kosice in a village called Brezina. I stay there several times a year, in summer even for a few weeks or months. I need assistance everywhere, so also there.
In addition, I often need help when traveling by my car between Prague and Kosice - you can be very helpful with this. It is most advantageous if you have the same route and/or can drive.
Not infrequently, I also look for people who enjoy traveling and are willing to assist someone like me on these trips. Of course, we would have to see each other for assistance for some time beforehand and get along.
However, wherever you are, you can always spread my flyers, posts, and information about me on social networks or in various groups - even in your place of residence. Today, there is a great migration of people and you never know who will go to Prague, who will stay in eastern Slovakia, or who will travel the same route as me and will want to assist me. In any case, if something about me has caught your attention and despite not being in Prague you would like to get to know me, do not hesitate to get in touch...

Question 18

What is your diagnosis, or what are your physical limitations?

Accepted Answer

My main diagnosis is post-neuromyelitic syndrome. In other words, a condition following a past episode of neuromyelitis. At least that is what was claimed, although in reality no one could accurately diagnose the condition at the time.
However, I assume that this name probably does not mean much to anyone, so I would rather say that it is damage to the motor center in the cerebellum, which controls movements. Or also that it is damage to the spinal cord and nerve sheaths as a result of vaccination against polio during influenza and simultaneous administration of streptomycin, which is practically a lethal combination consciously administered by a negligent doctor.
What is essential, however, are mainly the consequences, so I have been permanently in a wheelchair since approximately the age of 10. I can feel my whole body, including my legs, and I have perfect control over my bowels and bladder. At the same time, however, my whole body is affected in such a way that it is very weak. I can do any activity that does not require much physical strength.
I have preserved fine motor skills in my hands, but strength, that I do not have. For example, I cannot raise my right hand higher than my chest, and that is the slightly stronger one. I can raise my left one even less. I cannot push or support myself with my hands and legs and I cannot help you physically in any way. Certainly not in a way that would help with a transfer. There is no way I can stand up. In addition, I have scoliosis, i.e., spinal deformity, of the 4th degree.

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