by Liam Kloef

Created on: January 17, 2009

When I was very young, I used to get knots in my stomach whenever I saw someone on crutches. In grade school, there were a couple of my peers who periodically used crutches: I never knew why.

In seventh grade, someone would wheel in an eighth grader who was painfully thin: he took his study hall in our social studies class. He labored over picking up and opening one of his textbooks. I couldn't imagine what kind of malady could leave someone around my age bound, as they used to say, to a wheelchair. A year or so later, when I was in high school, I heard that the young man had died. Only many years later did I realized what awful, wasting disease he had: muscular dystrophy (MD).

In my last year of college, my academic adviser arranged for me to spend some months overseas, working in a volunteer organization associated with the Red Cross. Was I interested? In place of imagining what kind of job I was qualified for was a void. What had I to lose? I accepted.

After a week or so of indoctrination, two other volunteers and I were assigned to a home for the disabled. Whatever knots I still got when I saw someone on crutches were about to disappear for good.

There were vast ranges of ages and ailments: from practically children in their early teens to elderly men and women; from people with polio to people paralyzed with spinal cord injuries. One of the spinal cord victims had been a mail carrier by profession: this home had been on his route.

Depending on what shift I was assigned to, our job was to get the residents up in the morning; help them to dress; help them eat and go to the bathroom, if necessary; help them undress; and put them to bed. There were two male wards and one female ward. I worked mainly on the male wards, although I was occasionally sent to help out the ladies. Under those circumstances, no one could afford to be self-conscious.

Everyone, including the staff, was thoroughly institutionalized: a mild panic ensued whenever routines were jeopardized. My foremost job was to maintain routine.

Some of the luckier residents left the home during the day. One Mr. K., paralyzed from the mid-back down because of a diving accident, went to work at a real job: in the insurance field, I believe. He required a minimum of aid to dress and guzzled down a pint of cabbage juice each morning (to help his bowels). Other residents worked in places designed for the disabled: counting beads for jewelry or ball bearings for industry.

I got to know Mr. K. fairly well through another

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