When you work in a rehab center with spinal cord injury patients (SCI), you hear the themes in this opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal a lot.
Remember: just because someone is in a wheelchair and can't move much at all, doesn't mean their brain doesn't work (or their mouth).
Talk to the person in the wheelchair, not their companions. That is all.
Happy weekend wherever you may be.
Showing posts with label paralysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paralysis. Show all posts
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Choices
My travelling partner was not feeling well Monday. Her blood pressure was up when I checked it the other day, by machine and manually. She came in because we are short of staff. "This vertigo won't go away." she said. Yesterday, it was so bad, she went to the ER. They admitted her.
He was one of our regulars. A mustachioed man with a syrupy accent so heavy, I was occasionally called in to translate (because I'm good at translating) for the new nurses who don't recognize the cadence and drawl from his part of the South. One nurse I worked with had known from the time he was injured. He knew our programs so well he could have taught them, she said. We were the safety net: if he got sick, he always came to us (even drove himself this time).
But he was more than sick: he was septic, so the Hotel was not the place for him. We sent him on to Washington for more acute care, and he got worse. He survived some crazy cardiac stunts, but the last procedure set off a cascade from which he did not survive. His car sat on the parking lot when I arrived the other morning. The family came and picked it up yesterday.
Today, I read this story, passed along from one of my coworkers. He didn't want to live like many folks do at the Hotel. He just wanted to die, and with his family, he did. It was so sad because he chose to leave when his wife was pregnant with his first child. "He'll never hold their child.", the article said.
He'll never see that child, either, or make a difference in his/her life. That is the part, to me, which is the saddest. I have worked with rehab patients who have raised children (yes, they need help), and they do parent them. They do discipline them. They do care, even if they cannot lift a finger.
The choices we make can change things forever.
He was one of our regulars. A mustachioed man with a syrupy accent so heavy, I was occasionally called in to translate (because I'm good at translating) for the new nurses who don't recognize the cadence and drawl from his part of the South. One nurse I worked with had known from the time he was injured. He knew our programs so well he could have taught them, she said. We were the safety net: if he got sick, he always came to us (even drove himself this time).
But he was more than sick: he was septic, so the Hotel was not the place for him. We sent him on to Washington for more acute care, and he got worse. He survived some crazy cardiac stunts, but the last procedure set off a cascade from which he did not survive. His car sat on the parking lot when I arrived the other morning. The family came and picked it up yesterday.
Today, I read this story, passed along from one of my coworkers. He didn't want to live like many folks do at the Hotel. He just wanted to die, and with his family, he did. It was so sad because he chose to leave when his wife was pregnant with his first child. "He'll never hold their child.", the article said.
He'll never see that child, either, or make a difference in his/her life. That is the part, to me, which is the saddest. I have worked with rehab patients who have raised children (yes, they need help), and they do parent them. They do discipline them. They do care, even if they cannot lift a finger.
The choices we make can change things forever.
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