Welcome to the Client Cafe

The Client Cafe is our new gathering place that is currently under construction.

We'd like the Cafe to be the place you can come to:

• read a story about one of our clients or information from a Peer [someone who uses a ventilator or some of our TIL equipment]. We find these stories interesting and inspiring and we hope you will too.
• share or seek information. You can send a question to one of our Peers who will be glad to help. You can ask about your equipment or about our services. Or, if you have a helpful tip on equipment you'd like to share with others, we'd love you to send it in and we'll post it on the site.

You can read our first installment below.

You can also send us a question that we will post on our Frequently Asked Question pages–for TIL or PROP. To send us a question, use the Client Cafe Connections form below.

Help us to make the Client Cafe an interesting and informative place to hang out.

 

Jeanette has Seen it All

by Jane Dyson

For this inaugural edition of Balance, we wanted to look back at the advances that have been made in respiratory and mobility technology and we thought about Jeanette Andersen’s story.

When Jeanette was 16 years old, she walked into New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital feeling unwell. By midnight, she was completely paralyzed by polio. By the next morning, she couldn’t breathe and was put into an iron lung.  Jeanette says this  “monstrous, ugly thing” was terrifying, but she was also thankful for it because she could at least breathe. Two months later Jeanette moved to the George Pearson Centre where she lived for more than 30 years.

When Jeanette was 16 years old, she walked into New Westminster’s Royal Columbian Hospital feeling unwell. By midnight, she was completely paralyzed by polio. By the next morning, she couldn’t breathe and was put into an iron lung.

Memories flow from Jeanette as we chat in her comfortable apartment at Noble House Co-op, her home since 1991.  She says that, during the two months she was in the iron lung, she did not see her body. When she was finally well enough to be taken out of it, she was deeply shocked to see how her muscles had atrophied.
Jeanette has a vivid memory of the hot wool packs that were placed on her arms and legs to help promote her circulation. To this day, she cannot stand the smell of wet wool and, for many years, she couldn’t eat hamburger meat because of a well-meaning staff member who insisted on making her eat it raw to increase her strength!

When Jeanette was in the iron lung, she frequently heard about how great rocking beds were, but when she finally used one she was not impressed. The beds were considered to be something of a technological advancement for people who had left the confines of an iron lung. Rocking backwards and forwards, they were designed to stimulate the diaphragm with each forward and backward motion. Not surprisingly, they also made a lot of people feel nauseous and took a great deal of getting used to.
The invention of smaller, portable ventilators made rocking beds and iron lungs generally obsolete.  Jeanette gradually regained some of her breathing and only used a ventilator at night. But in 1985,  her health deteriorated badly and she had a heart attack. Since then, she has used a ventilator full time.
Technological advancements not only provided Jeanette with better respiratory equipment, but also with more mobility and independence. Before the invention of electric wheelchairs, Jeanette was completely dependent on others for her mobility.  “I’d have to wait for someone to wheel me around in my manual chair. The introduction of electric wheelchairs was a huge breakthrough. It meant I could go out on my own without relying on other people. Suddenly I was so much more independent.”

Jeanette used to steer her wheelchair with one finger until the day she went to the bank and found she no longer had enough strength to do that.  She changed to a sip-and-puff control that operates much more than just her wheelchair: she uses it to close her blinds, turn her lights on and off, control her TV, radio, and other household devices.

Jeanette explained how years of depending on others weakened her urge for independence.  “After I’d been living at Pearson for some time, Simon Cox asked me if I would like a device that would enable me to change the channels on my TV. I said okay, but there was no rush. About a year later, he asked me again and I said sure. Well, the change in my life that that device made was amazing.  It was a huge eye-opener for me. Looking back now, I can’t believe I wasn’t in a rush to have that piece of technology. You get so used to being totally dependent, the desire for independence starts to go. And it can take a long time for it to resurface.”

The invention of automatic door openers was another “huge deal” for Jeanette.  “Before they came along, I would have to wait for someone to pass by to open the door. If I went out on to the Pearson grounds, I’d have to wait at the door for someone to let me in. Those technological breakthroughs encouraged me to challenge myself to do more things. I would set myself a small goal everyday, and pretty soon I found I was setting myself several goals everyday. With every positive step, I wanted to take another one and then another.”

In the late 1970s, Jeanette started working for BC’s Ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs monitoring the media for deceptive advertising. Simon made her a device to help her operate a tape recorder. “I could never have done that job for so long without that invention.” Jeanette worked for Consumer and Corporate Affairs for more than 10 years.

As Jeanette and I finish our chat, some friends arrive for dinner. As she gets ready to phone for a Chinese takeout, she says, “I could never have moved out of Pearson without PROP and TIL. TIL makes it possible for me, a PROP client, to live independently in the community.”
I am struck as I always am when Jeanette tells me her stories by how much has changed in her life. From an iron lung to a small portable respirator, from rocking beds to a sip-and-puff control with over 70 functions,  Jeanette has seen it all. 

Client Cafe Connections