Lingering Impressions

A Mind Trapped in a Body

II

 My van had two front seats and two rows of bench seats directly behind. Behind this space was room for two wheel chairs side by side. Normally I would have 6 passengers that occupied the seats and two wheel chairs with patients strapped to those chairs. Before I can explain the next incident, I must first explain the music and how we determined who would sit where. Who ever had this route before me, had placed the passengers in the two bench seats. The passenger seat in front remained empty. The radio station had been set by the director and was not a station that I enjoyed. So, on one of my first trips, I asked the passengers if I could find another station. As I was turning the dial, I happened upon an “oldies rock and roll” station. I asked if this station was ok and since we were all new to one another, I was met with silence. In time, various patients would join in and sing along with a familiar song. Each trip, morning and evening took around an hour and a half not counting the time involved before I picked up my first passenger or after I dropped off my last passenger and headed back home. At my first pickup point on the morning run, I picked up one young gentleman, I suppose around 30 or 35 years of age. He was almost always a little late. Not enough to cause any problems with my route, but giving me a few minutes to become acquainted with the staff of the home. The reason that he was late was that the nurse responsible for getting him dressed and fed worked at another job and always ran a few minutes late arriving at this home. This man had Lou Gehrig's disease. He had been a tour guide before becoming ill. He had progressed to the point that he could not control his bodily functions, so he wore a diaper. He could not control his hands, so he had to be fed. He had to be cleaned by a caretaker. About the only thing he could do was manage a mis-aligned smile. You could tell when he was happy and that was an almost constant thing. While waiting for him, I would go into his room and talk to him. Of course it was a one way conversation as even a grunt was almost beyond his control. As I understand the disease, even though he gradually lost the use of all muscles in his body, his mind remained clear. He had a collection of base ball caps and pictures from Playboy. He seemed to enjoy watching TV. I loaded him along with his wheel chair into the back of the van and the other two passengers also climbed into the van. We began the lengthy trip to pick up the rest of the patients. We picked up the rest of the patients and as, by time, the patients were becoming comfortable around me, the van was fairly noisy. Then out of the blue, I heard this young man trying to sing along with the song on the radio. An outsider would not have recognized any “music” in the noise he made, but as I looked in the rear view mirror, it was oblivious he was trying to sing. The effort required soon took its toll and he was quite again, just as I had always known him. His soul, his mind, trying to escape the prison of his non-responsive body.

My first day

                                                           

I
One could only describe her cry as a shriek.  As I looked in my rear view mirrow, I saw her body stiffen, straining against the straps that held her in the wheel chair.  Her body stretched over the back of her chair, her head hanging behind and below my vision. The shrieks continued, growing louder,

“What have I got myself into?”

With only a few months to go until I retired, I had applied for a job driving a van hauling people, unable to care for themselves, to adult day care centers.  I had rode with the director for a couple of days and he had then turned the van over to me.  He had showed me how to strap the wheel chairs in the back of the van where a seat had been removed.  He made sure I knew the route both in the morning when we picked every one up and again in the evening when in the evening when we took every one home to their centers that would care for their needs during the off hours.  Only the least capable of the adults I carried, would go to the day care center.  The rest would go to “make shift” jobs. 

No one had warned me of any problems I might encounter!  With her head hanging over the back of her chair, with her body appearing to have some kind of “fit”, would she swallow her tongue choking her self?

I pulled off the road and turned in my seat to check the situation. 

“She will be ok.  She does this all the time”

I don’t remember who said those reassuring words.  As I came to know my group of riders, I would find that hardly any could read and that they all were handicapped in some way, almost always mentally, physically and emotionally.  But as a couple more of my riders agreed with the first speaker and as I saw that she didn’t seem to be in danger of choking, I continued my run.  Eventually her screams would cease.  Within a short time, she was removed from the home where she stayed.  Later questions about her welfare would not yield much information.  At the time I thought that she would be the most handicapped that I would have as a rider.  Not quite!

The company that I worked for in a major city, took care of over 600 people who had needs that they could not fulfill on their own.  There were other companies that also helped fulfill this need.  Not all of these people need full time care.  Many only needed someone to visit once a month to make sure they had paid their utilities or needed someone to make sure they were eating decent meals.  Others needed someone to check on them on a weekly basis or some needed some one to spend the night making sure they took their medicine.  Others needed someone to bathe them, provide meals and any other needs.  The adults who needed full time attention lived in homes with as little as 2 people or as many as 8 in the home.  Full time care takers rotated shifts to provide for these adults.

I had not been aware that there were so many adults that needed help.  Seldom do we see these handicapped adults.  Although we may see many in wheel chairs and sometimes they may need help, the adults that I was dealing with had other emotional and physical problems that compounded their problems.  In spite of their problems, I was about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime.
            to be continued

THE AUTHOR

My name is Pete Williams.  Some years back, while editor of a newspaper, I began a series of articles that I called "Lingering Impressions".  I would write about people I had met who had experiences to share.  Most of these experience were not common knowledge and some examples would be war experiences, depressions stories, or just events that occurred in local towns years ago.

In the time since I was editor, I have written 2 books.  "Talk to Me Dad!", an adult novel, and "Flood on the Buffalo", a teen age adventure story.

Then I decided the time had come to retire and with a few months to go before I could receive my retirement, I took a part time job.

In the last 5 years, events have occurred in my life that taught me more about life than I had learned in the previous 60.  In this blog I would like to share some of these truths.