July 19, 2006

Running behind (again ;-)) so this one is going up with minimal editing.

Today was the Airport Outing. We met at the Shepherd bus. The wheelchairs and their occupants were strapped in, family members took their seats, and off we went to Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. We took the elevator to ticketing and were met by David Martin, Sr. Specialist – Disabilities, Delta Airlines. He went around and introduced himself to each member of our group and talked with us individually as we waited for everyone to gather (the elevator could only hold two wheelchairs at a time, and there were six chairs). He told the group he was going to explain a little about traveling with disabilities and what Delta had to offer (and that he was so convinced that Delta was the best way for a person with disabilities to travel, he was going to give each one of us his business card with his phone, fax, and email, so that we could contact him about any future travel plans we might make). He said Delta has been doing the outreach program for customers with disabilities for fifteen years.

To begin the program, he said that if we took only one thing away with us today, he wanted it to be that if we ever had a problem concerning airplane travel, the person at every airport who could help us was the CRO, Complaint Resolution Official.

Next he covered the four ways a person could check in for a domestic flight: in our jammies at home by using the internet, even if we had bags to check – the only requirement to checking in online was to join the Frequent Flier Club, but that is free; by checking in with a skycap downstairs at Baggage Claim; by coming upstairs and using the terminals at the self-service kiosks; the old-fashioned way (and most time-consuming) of talking to a human at Domestic check-in.

He stated that once the person with a disability has a reservation, however they get it, they should call Reservations at the airline. They won’t be asked about their disability, but the more information they give, the better the service they will be provided with. So, for instance, people like Gary should let reservations know that they will be traveling with their own wheelchair and that they will need transfer assistance into the plane. They should give information about their chair so that the airline knows what to expect (useful info is the dimensions and weight of the chair, whether it is manual or power, whether it is collapsible). Also, this is the time to arrange for “Meet and Assist” if that service is desired, telling reservations exactly what kind of help is needed. This is a service mandated by Federal law for people with disabilities and carries a $25,000 fine if violated, so the airlines take it very seriously. This service provides you as a disabled person with any help you need, from pushing your wheelchair to walking with you to your gate to transporting your luggage (this last is something Gary would need). At reservations, one can also say a family member is going to help with assistance, and that person will be issued a gate pass if they aren’t actually going to take the flight.

Before David took us upstairs to the kiosks, all the patients did a weight shift. They had all “synced their watches,” so did them all together throughout the day. I wondered if anyone else in the airport noticed how every half an hour, this group of people in wheelchairs would suddenly bend forward, or bend from one side to the other, or depress upwards, holding their positions for a minute.

After showing us how the kiosks worked, David took us to Delta’s International Check-in. It had some kiosks, but they weren’t as “friendly” as the Domestic ones – you could book a flight directly from point A to point B, but no more than that; in more complicated situations, you needed to speak directly with an agent at the check-in counter.

Next we went to the Special Assistance Line. We showed our gate passes and IDs – at this point Gary decided it would be good to have something easy to get at that could be used to carry items such as these (he should no longer carry a wallet in his back pocket because of skin pressure issues, and it’s too hard to get things out of his front pocket); I told him I had a passport bag that is worn around the neck that he could try if he liked.

We were then admitted to the Security area. A member of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spoke to us about what the security procedure would be for PWDs (people with disabilities). Basically, everyone would be requested to remove their shoes (and if you couldn’t do it yourself, as Gary can’t as yet, and if you weren’t traveling with someone helping you, the security people would remove your shoes and then put them back on you at the end), all items that “normally” would go on the conveyor to be scanned are still treated that way, and the PWD goes off to a separate line for a pat-down (and if that person is uncomfortable with that being done in public, they can request a private screening). Their chair will be inspected, and they will be asked to lean forward so that their back and the back of their chair can be checked, and they will be asked to shift from side to side so that their seat and the seat of the chair can be checked. I didn’t think to ask what would happen if they couldn’t comply with this. I also forgot to ask Gary how thoroughly they checked his chair. As my chiropractor pointed out later, if the security people didn’t thoroughly inspect chairs, what was to stop a group of terrorists from posing as a quadriplegic basketball team and smuggling onboard some –

Okay, maybe the “quadriplegic basketball team” designation might have given them away, but you get the idea.

Anyway, the set-up at Atlanta made the process relatively easy for those with disabilities; that may differ at other places, but they all have provisions for security checks for PWDs.

David cautioned that at this point in the boarding process, the airport may become chaotic. People will be rushing to their flights and they only tend to see what is at eye level and may accidently run into PWDs (and some will just be rude and cut off PWDs). He said to be assertive and get up front to the doors of the trains – they don’t bounce back like the elevator doors of Shepherd do, so you’ll feel it if they hit you. Once you get in the train, you need to turn your chair around (which may not be the easiest thing if the train is crowded, but it is necessary to get out of the doors), face perpendicular to the direction of travel for safety, and lock your wheels or if you’re in a power chair, turn it off. Finally, hold on, cuz you’ll feel some g’s in those trains! (At the command, “Please hold on,” I grabbed one of the posts, Gary grabbed the handrails of his wheelchair – David was right – that train was jerky!)

We headed toward a gate on the international concourse. One of the wheelchair occupants entertained us by grabbing onto the back of the power chair occupied by another Shepherd patient and “waterskiing” behind it. I told Gary he should grab on and form a train.

At the gate, we were told it was a good idea to request to be pre-boarded. This is of convenience to the airline personnel, since it is easier to get you on first than last. If you pre-board, you will be last to get off, for safety reasons. Also at the gate, you “gate check” your chair – it will be the last thing put into baggage and it will be the first thing off, waiting for you at your arrival gate.

Each patient then wheeled themself down to the end of the jetway. Here they were each transferred onto the “aisle chair,” a tall, skinny, high-backed wheelchair designed to fit down the narrow aisle of an aircraft. Delta has its own design for such a chair, which is hydraulic and so can be raised or lowered to the desired heights for transfer; it’s not always available, though, in which case the other kind of “fixed” chair is. Gary did a depression transfer into the chair aided by two trained Delta personnel while I hovered nearby nervously and reminded him about the placement of his feet – for which he thanked me later, as foot position, as well as timing, is so important in a transfer. He was strapped into the chair and then wheeled backward into the plane – yes, a real plane. He forgot to take his cushion, so I grabbed that and followed him in. I took a window seat, and Gary was transferred onto his cushion in the aisle seat. He’d been thinking of doing a depression transfer to the airplane seat, but the airline personnel obviously wanted to do a two-man lift on him – maybe for the practice or maybe for speed because they had two more patients to get onto the plane. So Gary agreed to that. David noticed one patient wince as she was transferred by a two-man lift, and he reminded us that we needed to be assertive with the personnel: even though they are trained to do the transfers, they don’t know your particular body, so you need to tell them if anything hurts, if they are going too fast, etc. He also cautioned that while Atlanta Delta personnel was highly trained in the transfers, this might not be true with other carriers of at other airports, so you may need to be more directive in telling them how to transfer you.

If it happens that the plane being boarded must be entered by going out on the tarmac, a mechanical lift is used for those in chairs. David cautioned the Shepherd patients to never let anyone carry them up the stairs; it is against the law.

We were in a wide-body plane, and David had airline personnel show how doors near the lavatories could be shut to enclose the entire lavatory area. So this would offer privacy if one needed to do an IC on the plane and couldn’t transfer into the lavatory itself (which Gary couldn’t, at least not easily, even using the on-craft wheelchair). I’m not sure if all wide-body planes built since ’92 have this feature, but I believe David indicated Delta’s did.

After a snack was offered (no special treatment here ;-)), the patients were deboarded. Gary did a depression transfer onto the aisle chair from his plane seat and declared it easy. He needed and got more help from the airline personnel with his transfer from the aisle chair to his own wheelchair. David came up to us and asked us if we’d thought the presentation useful, and we said very much so. It made it seem that airline travel was going to be very doable for Gary (at least as long as he sticks to Delta ;-)). David then gave us his card and told Gary to call him anytime he was going to travel by air, that even if it was to someplace not handled by Delta, he would make sure the flight went smoothly. We’re not sure how he can handle making this offer to everyone – I believe Shepherd has these outings once a month!

After that, Gary and others went off to do their ICs in a restroom, and then it was off to the food court, where each patient got up to eight dollars to spend. (I ate my rice, which I’d at last remembered to bring with me ;-).) Gary and I got a table to ourselves, and he commented that when he’d first come to Shepherd, two months ago, he’d asked his doctor if he’d ever feel hungry again. He’d just recently stopped being fed intravenously, and he didn’t have much of an appetite for “real food,” plus he’d had trouble with nausea; he’d been packing down the meals and the Ensures and so forth only because the doctor had told him to. He’d worried that since he couldn’t feel anything below nipple level, this meant he would never be hungry again, that it was always going to be the case that eating was a mechanical process only done to get nourishment into him and not a source of enjoyment. He said he was happy to say he now felt hungry. Then he dug into his quarter-pounder with cheese.

After everyone in the group had finished their meal, we got back onto the train to go to baggage check. While on the train, I commented to Gary that it would be a much harder test if they’d had to get off at one of the intermediary stops instead of the last stop, as the train was so crowded. This train was particularly jerky, and a friendly young woman who’d nearly fallen over said to Gary, “You’re on wheels, how’s that working for you?” Gary said his wheels were locked. “Chicken!” she teased him. She then watched our group get off the train, and she called it out as if it were a race, which we had to smile at. The woman “winning” said she had the “advantage” of being in a chair powered by a battery.

We didn’t do anything at baggage claim, just went through it to the exit to get back onto the bus to go to Shepherd. The only complaint anyone had about the airport trip was that the paper towel dispensers in the restrooms were too high.

Back in Gary’s room, we got him transferred into his bed. The call from the newspaper came shortly after that. I couldn’t stay to hear it all because I was getting ready to go to the chiropractor. I know he was asked about the accident. He said he hoped they’d be putting a light at Grand National and 280; he said he’d always hated that intersection, and he still didn’t understand how the accident happened, because he’d always been so cautious there; he told her that he remembers nothing of the actual accident, just that one moment he was at that intersection and the next moment he was being transported to the emergency room. He said he’d felt his legs, and it was like touching someone else’s body, and he thinks he knew at that point he was paralyzed. But he also realized he still had his hands and his brain seemed okay – he could answer the questions of the transporting personnel. So he realized right away he would still be able to do most of what he loved – and he loved his work, he added. But it was scary, too, he said, because he didn’t know what he was getting into, what it meant to be paralyzed.

He told the reporter a little about his hospital stay, how he was UAB Hospital for about a month, for three weeks of that in ICU on a ventilator. He told her how my sister had looked into spinal rehab places and discovered that Shepherd was one of the best places in the nation for it, and so he’d come here.

He also mentioned me :-), saying I’d been with him every day since the accident (okay, he forgot about April 17th when I’d dashed home to send in the tax stuff). He told her I’d started a blog to keep friends and family abreast of what was going on with him (I should have slipped him a piece of paper with the URL!). He told her a little about his typical day here, though he later told me he wished he’d gone more into that. He told her he’d be pretty much independent, though everything would take longer – for instance, that it would probably take him two to three hours to get up, get bathed, dressed, and have breakfast before heading to the university.

At that point he said he was really happy to be going back to work, that he loved his work. He said the people in the math department have been very helpful: he told her that my brother had come out all the way from Colorado to make our house more wheelchair friendly, and math department people had been with him nearly every day helping him do the job.

He told the reporter he never dreamed this would happen to him, but that he felt lucky to be alive, and that he was also lucky that unlike many others with spinal cord injuries, he would be able to return to his work. He said that somehow he’d never felt depressed about his situation. At this point I got mentioned again :-), him saying my being here all the time has been such a big help, that it would have been much harder to go through this alone. He told her he was confident that he would eventually be pretty independent, though it would take a few more months before he was as independent as he wanted to be (maybe he should have mentioned how the consequences of the bed sore he’d gotten at the UAB Hospital was holding him up on that account ;-)).

He told her he was being discharged from Shepherd on July 28th, and that he’d go into Day Program for two weeks until August 11th, then he’d be coming home – just in time for Fall Semester. He told her how the chair of the department was very supportive, arranging it so that this fall all Gary would have to teach was his graduate students. He said he also planned to lead the Topology seminar, to do his duties for the couple of journals that he was on the board of, and to continue his research, but that since he wouldn’t have regularly scheduled undergraduate classes this fall, he could ease into things. He told her he planned on resuming a normal teaching schedule in the spring.

At that point I was out the door, so I didn’t hear any more. When I asked him later what he’d talked about, he couldn’t remember any more than this, so I guess you’ll have to read the news article to find out. Just remember, you’ve probably heard most of it here, first ;-)

My cell phone rang when I was at the chiropractor, but I waited until I’d gotten back to the hotel to listen to the message. It was from Gary, saying the newspaper reporter wanted to talk to me too. Yikes! I’m no good at extemporaneous speaking. I’d like to tell her to just read the blog. Surely I’ve covered everything she could ask about, wouldn’t you say? ;-)

Now for the home report, courtesy of Jo Heath. 1) John Hinrichsen plans to build a platform for our futon couch so that Gary can transfer onto it (right now, that transfer would be a major undertaking, as the futon is so low); the advantage to keeping the futon rather than getting another couch is that when the futon is flat, Gary can use it as an exercise surface (for his stretching program, for example). 2) Janet Rogers and Donna Bennett and Jo Heath went ahead and painted the other two bedrooms. 3) Wlodek Kuperberg is installing bathroom fixtures.

As Gary said when I read him Jo's email, we don't know how we can ever repay everyone who has been such a help. Actually, we know we can't, but if there's anything we can ever do for you (after we get our second wind ;-)) let us know.

To finish, the picture taken by Stuart (for those of you reading this by email, go to http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/ and scroll down):



Gary's cousin Jean, Gary, and me. Okay, little Laura, you've got a contemporary picture with the two of us in it simultaneously. Happy now? ;-)