Project Report
| Aug 7, 2023
"Come on, let's get out of here!"
![PAY IT FORWARD - Anna Pyrzanowska]()
PAY IT FORWARD - Anna Pyrzanowska
"Come on, let's get out of here!" – an old lady suggested. She was lying with me in a room at the Warsaw Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. I was treated there for another episode of severe depression, which "took over" me for the first time when I was 25 years old. I had been in a bad condition. I had been living, but in a different world. And yet, on that hot, August Sunday, I succumbed to the persuasions of my neighbor, mobilized the last of my strength and left the hospital with her.
I climbed the stairs to the footbridge over the busy street, then I saw an elevator, and on it a sticker with the international sign of people with disabilities - a white outline of a man in a wheelchair on a blue background. There was a holding bar by the elevator. I grabbed it, did a flip, and threw myself down onto the sidewalk. My companion, screaming, managed to grab me by the ankle of one of my legs. But she didn't have the strength to hold me… I fell. I survived. I was 30 years old…
Someone called an ambulance. They took me to the hospital. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a fracture of the cervical spine with a disruption of the spinal cord and a fracture of the left shin. I was completely paralyzed. But I found it out much later… Afterwards, I was taken to a rehabilitation center. After back and leg surgery. After 8 months of lying in a collar around my neck, connected to a ventilator, blood pressure monitor and pulse oximeter, naked, with a diaper on my butt, covered with a green hospital sheet. When the tracheostomy tube was finally removed from my throat and I was able to speak, then I found out that the only gesture I will make in my life is ... a slight shoulder shrug.
When I was leaving the hospital, no one knew what to do with me. So I returned home. To a 2-room apartment on the first floor of a block without an elevator in Anin near Warsaw. Under the wings of my elderly parents, including a father who was fighting cancer back then. I knew that neither they would last long taking care of an adult daughter, who even had to be fed, because she would not be able to hold anything in her hands, nor would I be able to continue living without proper rehabilitation, and there was no room for such in our apartment. We decided with my parents and friends to find a new "home" for me - a center with 24-hour care.
And so my great journey has began… I had to pay 9,000 PLN per month for the first resort. Although family and friends collected every penny for me, I did not manage to "anchor" myself there for a longer period of time. I was 2 weeks in the second center for 2 weeks. The building was beautiful and well equipped, but the employees were completely unable to take care of a person with quadriplegia. I spent 5 years in the third center, including 2020, which was tragic for the world and the time of the great COVID-19 pandemic. Such places are infamously referred to as “centers for dying”. I was accommodated with elderly people whose minds were taken over by dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Old age was my companion every day. It terrified me at first. Then I started to learn maturity and serenity from it. And after December 2020, I moved to center number 4. Also living with people with fleeting memories and often forgotten by others. I was there for… 7 days. Promises were made at the reception: that I would eat with all the residents in the one room, that they would put me in an upright position and sit me on a wheelchair, that they would come to my aid whenever I would need it – those promises were quickly forgotten. A friend helped me to "escape". I returned to my family's apartment. Not for long… Fortunately…
Another friend told me about training apartments for people with disabilities in Konin. I didn't even know such places existed. That you can actually stay there, learn to live on your own and rehabilitate yourself. I went to the Doctor Piotr Janaszek’s “Podaj Dalej” Foundation's website., which has created this project. I filled out the form and had an interview. I applied in the summer, because I am always terribly cold. In July 2021 I started living again.
How is it here? First of all: no one is afraid of us, people with disabilities. Assistants, caretakers know perfectly well how to grab us, hold us, lift us, move us so as not to hurt us or ourselves. They don't sigh that someone needs something again, they don't ignore us, they don't turn away from us, they don't look at us with disgust. Secondly, nobody here feels sorry for us. They help us out when it is absolutely necessary. They help us if we really need it. And they teach every activity, often finding unconventional solutions when we cannot do something “traditionally”.
Allow me to briefly summarize. My name is Anna and I am 37 years old. For the first time in 7 years: I eat alone with a spoon held by a rubber band on my hand, I brush my teeth and my body by myself, I use an active manual wheelchair myself, I wipe the table top with a cloth, I mop the floor myself, I turn the pages in a book myself and I slide my finger across the screen of my smartphone. For someone who couldn't lift a glass of water to his mouth by himself six months ago, that's pretty good, right...?
What do I regret? The fact that for 7 years no one told me that there are places like training apartments. When I was falling down in 2014, the “Podaj Dalej” Foundation was just starting this project. Now it develops by preparing new training apartments in Osada Janaszkowo ... Please, make everyone else, who happens to "fall", get up faster than me.
(The text was written and published on January 28, 2022)
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