Stranded at home
Committee forms to help woman with MS get a wheelchair accessible van.
For some, paying bills online and shopping by phone is a convenience. For Lisa Doucette, a 39-year-old mother of two grown children, it is a necessity. Doucette was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 2001, when her children were just three and two years of age.
“They’ve seen me, at times, stumble and fall.”
She recalls sitting Carter and Alyssa down around the time they were starting school.
“I told them, ‘it’s like this, if Mommy falls, don’t worry about Mommy. Mommy’s all right. She’s got something wrong with her that causes her to do this.’”
Her diagnosis had come after three years of travelling to specialists.
They, along with her husband, Darryl, have been understanding and supportive as the immune-mediated disease
gradually robbed her of her mobility. She has needed a wheelchair for mobility since 2014. With her husband working and her children in college, she now requires a caregiver during the day.
But getting out and about is challenging for the Deblois resident.
She’s been in to the Tim Hortons restaurant with her caregiver twice, but on their third visit she remained in the van. Transferring between her chair and a lift for getting to and from the passenger seat of the van was just too difficult.
The lift, the only modification that has been made to the van, “comes down to roughly the level of my wheelchair, and she’s got to help me over to that seat, but she’s also got to lift me over the wheelchair tire here to get me to that seat, and then she just presses a button and brings it up but, to go over to the passenger seat, she’s got to tug and pull and whatnot to get me in to where I should be sitting,” Doucette explained the process.
Another outing was to a grocery store.
“Instead of (me) going in, she just went in and picked up what I wanted.
“Then we came home.” She misses the socializing and finds time at home long. On nice mornings she rolls her chair out onto her step to have her coffee and waves at passersby.
“I’m outspoken, I like to talk; I like to mingle, and everybody knows that,” Doucette states.
She’d like to be able to “do what a person does at 39 years of age,” and admits that includes going to the grocery store and seeing what’s on the shelves.
A recently formed fundraising committee is trying to help make that happen.
“We saw the struggle her worker had to go through to try to get her into the van,” said committee member Janie McRae in explaining the committee’s interest in raising money for a wheelchair accessible van.
“We decided, ‘Let’s try to do something.”
They’ve opened up an account to accept donations at either the Tignish or Alberton branch of the Tignish Credit Union, and they are planning a benefit night in support of the cause. It will be held at the Tignish Legion on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m.