December 2007 • VOLUME 28 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
I was working for Homecare on a cold snowy day. Two feet of fresh snow piled on the streets, ice hidden below it from an overnight storm. My next "patient" was listed as a paraplegic in her late twenties. I was to assist her with AM care. I hurried into the building, expecting to meet another depressed, overburdened person to whom life had been immensely unfair. She wasn't there!! How odd, I thought, as where could this "dependent person" be? Perhaps she had gone to a family member's home and forgotten to call us at Home Care. Returning to the lobby to a telephone, I was met with an amazing sight. A beautiful, vibrant woman fought her way through the heavy glass doors, laughing, eyes sparkling and full of mischief....in her wheelchair. My "patient"? Not hardly, as I was soon to learn, although she was the person I had come to see. She informed me she had been out of smokes and had gone to the corner store to get some. I was both astonished and concerned, couldn't someone have gotten them for her ? I asked. Her answer was "they could have, but I try to be as independent as I can." But there had been a blizzard (no small thing in Saskatchewan). "How did you make it through the snow drifts, and it was cold out, what if you fell and couldn't get up?" She answered that she had "only fallen once" and got up herself, it was something she did a lot, and she practiced different ways to get up. I was inexperienced in rehab and community living, having only hospital experience at that time, and must admit as we proceeded to her home (a one bedroom apartment) that worst case scenarios continued to fill my mind. Her home was very alive and warm, full of encouraging messages, and pictures of horses. There she told me an amazing story.
|
|||||||
|
