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
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