House of Shadows

Please! Please help me!

2006-05-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

I think that for some this place is the last stop before the grave. It isn’t meant to be, since it’s intended to be a place in which to become rehabilitated in order to return to the life they once knew. But in point of fact many who are here will never return to the life they knew. Many are simply dumped here by insistent family who wish to keep some false sense of hope alive. But they realize, to some extent, that they will never see home again.

Right now I can hear the panicked, tearful pleading of an older woman down the hall. “Please, please help me! Won’t somebody please help me?! I want to go home! Please help me! Somebody please help me go home!”

I hear this for half an hour. It’s chilling. She knows there will be no going home. She simply doesn’t want to die among strangers.

Or does she really think going home will make it all right? Sad.

Now I hear some of the others taking up her plea. An uprising among the fearful at the approach of the end.

I want to go home, too. Just to escape the sound of such misery. I suppose home always holds promise, even if no one’s there.

Case Review Day

2006-03-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

My review day is coming up, and I have to confess that I regard it with something approaching dread.

Now, why would I? Why would I dread the opportunity to get out of this tomb and return to the familiar surroundings of my home?

Because, good people, I am wholly unprepared to take care of myself. I still wear a condom catheter and adult “briefs” ( I once thanked an aide for not using the term “diaper”) because I cannot make the simple transfer from my wheelchair to the toilet. At some point in the process you have to be able to remain standing without support while you drop your pants. Then, of course, you have to be able to rise from the throne independently and resume your seat in the wheelchair.

And I’m just not there yet. Oh, clothing’s no problem. I could sit around the house in briefs indefinitely. And I can wash and feed myself.

But I keep having this awful vision of myself stretched out in a room somewhere, lying in my own filth and urine. And this bothers me.

Oh, I’d get stronger at home in time. I would stick with the toe stands and easy push-ups. But it could take many months to get back to where I was before the accident. In the meantime many basic functions are not simply a challenge. They’re impossible.

No, I don't want to be here many months. I simply want to get to the point where I can get out of bed in the morning and make it into the bathroom. All on my own volition.

Being There

2006-03-22T06:47:00.000-08:00

At times I have the overwhelming feeling that I’m right there. I have the powerful conviction that I could simply get out of my wheelchair and bound out of the room. Everyone who knows me also knows that I haven’t always been this way. For most of my life I’ve been a vital, vibrant human being. Standing for long periods on the job as an immigration inspector was never a challenge for me. In my dreams I’m never handicapped.

What has changed? Why am I like this now? What muscles are not doing what they should? I constantly look for answers to these questions.

I only know that this is not my normal condition. And this gives me hope.

Women of Ghana

2006-03-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is not the place you’d care to be. In fact, you probably wouldn’t want others to see you here. The halls are blocked by people in various degrees of senescence. There’s much sobbing and tearful pleading. In the early and late hours of the day you hear shouts for help. Some loud and clear. Others almost animal-like guttural sounds.

It’s an eminently sad place.

This fact is belied by the laughing banter of the women of Ghana. Oddly enough, the daytime staff of aides consists largely of women from Ghana. Their speech has an alto, syrupy quality to it, so different from the faster, sharper talk of the African-American women.

Tisha tends to my daily needs, bringing me meals and assisting me with chores I would never have dreamed of asking of anyone. I have been handled by so many women both here and in the hospital that I’ve shed virtually all sense of modesty.

Victoria is a cheerful, friendly woman who was a bank manager in Accra for twenty-five years before coming to the United States. She told me friends assured her that she was bound to get a similar job in the States. Of course, she didn’t. Once I apologized to her for requesting some particularly odious assistance. She replied that I should never feel ashamed of needing help. She also told me that a place such as this is largely unknown in Ghana, because extended and close family ties provide the sort of help given in places such as this.

Victoria is also saddened by what she regards as a very poor understanding of Africa among Americans. She tells me this leads Westerners to simply dismiss a very rich and diverse continent. Victoria believes Africa was ransacked in colonial times, but that these same robber countries now distort the image of Africa to justify withholding investment in the continent.

The remainder of the staff I see on a regular basis are not from Ghana. But more on these later.

Coming to Be Here

2006-03-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

I came to be here after smashing my car into the freeway median during rush hour on the morning of Friday, February 10. And, yes. I remember each instant of that event. I remember my first sense of panic when I realized that I couldn’t lift my right foot off the accelerator as it continued to press down to the floor. I remember my fleeting sense of being in big trouble as I tried to find a way between the lanes of speeding cars. I remember hearing the WUMP, WUMP, as I sideswiped other cars in my mad dash through the traffic. Finally, I remember thinking to myself “THIS IS IT!! THIS IS IT!!” as I struck the median and the horizon went askew, expecting that the car would roll, or that I’d be struck on the side by the oncoming traffic.

But that didn’t happen. The car simply came to a long sliding, scrunching, metallic halt against the median barrier. My hat lay on the floor on the passenger side. An ominous-looking white van was parked directly behind me, but no one ever came out of it to talk to me. It took over an hour for a Michigan State trooper to appear. He asked for my license and registration without asking me how I was. When he finally returned them to me I mentioned that I might need some medical help, since I felt like I’d strained my back.

There followed a trip to Providence Hospital, where it was discovered that my first lumbar vertebra was totally crushed. Then came over three of the most painful, anxious, and fearful weeks in my life as the medicos repaired my vertebra and battled a nasty pleural effusion which at one point I was sure would suffocate me to death.

But it didn’t. My back was repaired, my lungs were put on the road to mending, and the time came to find me a place where I could regain the use of my legs and strengthen my back.

So I ended up here. In the House of Shadows.