(2) In 1971 I did volunteer work in Goldwater Memorial Hospital, on Roosevelt Island which, back then, was an odd park-like island with two hospitals, Goldwater Memorial and Byrde S. Memorial Hospital. Goldwater was designed to serve the needs of severely disabled patients. Byrde S. Coler was a hospice hospital for the terminally ill. The island was located across the East River facing the upper east side of Manhattan.
(3) As a volunteer I met a young woman who was dependent on an iron lung to breathe. Let us call her RG. RG was one of the first candidates to try and survive by breathing with what was then newly developed breathing equipment using a mouthpiece connected to an air pump. That was significant progress for her.
(4) RG told me that about five years previously she was a senior in a Catholic Nurse Training School. She was assigned to various hospitals as a nurse’s aide. She met and fell in love with a medical student, an Irishman. He was about a year away from becoming a medical physician. I saw pictures of the fiancés later. She was very beautiful, and he was very handsome like one of the Kennedy’s.
(5) RG must have picked up some kind of disease in one of the hospitals; as a senior, she started to feel weak and tired all the time. She told her doctor. Time passed, and her symptoms worsened, eventually she could not get up out of bed in the morning. She started to have difficulty breathing. She had to be hospitalized.
(6) When the med student fiancé saw what was happening to her, he left her.
(7) RG’s condition worsened. Naturally she became depressed. She gradually lost control of most all her muscles. She was hospitalized long-term at New York Hospital. Once, she was about to die when a physician at NY Hospital prescribed a massive dose of a combination of steroids and antibiotics This treatment worked somewhat. It arrested the progress of the disease but unfortunately, it did not undo the damage.
(8) RG’s diagnosis was listed as “polymyositis”, POLIO, but the name of the disease only described the symptoms, Polymyositis, = weakness in many muscles. Her condition was stabilized, however. No doctor ever isolated the cause of her muscular dysfunction, like a germ or virus: no known etiology.
(9) To accommodate her, a large van was purchased and adapted, in which she could travel in her motorized wheelchair. RG still had some feeble strength in her arms and hands so that she could push a sensitive switch on her motorized wheelchair, giving her mobility.
(10) To fight her depression, a trip was arranged to Lourdes, France. RG later wrote that her visit to Lourdes was uplifting. She saw other disabled people. She did not recover physically, but she writes that she came to accept herself more, she forgave her fiancé who disappeared when her condition worsened.
(11) RG is now 70 years old, and her spirits are good. She still goes to the hospital, Long Island University Hospital, about twice a month. She is dependent on 3 home attendants 24 hours a day.
(12) In 1973, thanks to the intervention of a politically influential doctor, Dr. A., RG went to Burke Rehab Center where a medical expert in prosthetic devices tried and failed to construct an “ecto-skeleton” to enhance the strength in her arms and legs. RG told Dr. A. she wanted to go to Fordham University and earn a Masters Degree in Social Work. She was accepted at Fordham in Bronx, NY. It was an adventure for her to be driven in her enormous van from Astoria, NY, to Fordham University for evening classes. I helped her with the typing and editing of her papers, but, basically, on her own, she finally received her Masters Degree and became a licensed social work counselor.
(13) To back-track a bit, while at the Burke Rehab Center, RG met FM, who suffered from severe ataxia due to lithium poisoning. FM was from nearby White Plains, about 3o miles north of New York City. FM had earned an engineering degree from McGill University in Canada, had met the “perfect” girl there, and she loved him, and they planned to get married. Then she got sick and died. FM got very depressed, went for psychiatric help. The psychiatrist prescribed lithium treatments, which, in those days, was the preferred method of treating depression. The dosages were too high, however. FM got deathly sick, had to be hospitalized. He was diagnosed with blood poisoning. The levels of lithium were toxic. FM lost his ability to walk, has to use wheelchair to move about. His speech is slurred. His hands shake so much, he really cannot write anymore. His vision is somewhat impaired. After his condition was stabilized, FM was sent to Burke Rehabilitation Center for rehabilitation where he met and befriended RG. FM was then sent to Goldwater Memorial Hospital.
(14) While at Goldwater Hospital, RG and FM asked for assistance to live independently in the community. RG and FM got married spiritually if not legally, and they rented two apartments in the same building in Astoria, NY. After about ten years there, they purchased a home in Whitestone in a very nice neighborhood. And they lived happily ever after.
(15) Currently, FM is trying to graduate from wheelchair to walking with walker, and, to improve his vision, he is exercising with specialized charts and playing the mind-improving games of lumosity.com. FM is also better able to eat his own food as opposed to being fed.
(16) Once a year RG gives talks at seminars at Long Island University School of Nursing. Both RG and FM are interested in liberal politics.
© 22 June 2013
About the Author
No comments:
Post a Comment