http://www.theledger.com/local/local/21nwah.htm
Wednesday, November 21, 2001
WINTER HAVEN -- Paula Smith could
ask for a lot of things to make living with multiple sclerosis easier.
A handicapped-accessible shower and a bathroom large enough to turn her
wheelchair in would be a vast improvement over her sponge baths and bedside
commode.
Wider halls in the house her parents
bought in Southeast Winter Haven in the mid-1960s, where she lives with
her mother, also would be helpful.
But her request for Newspaper with
a Heart readers, if money is available, is more basic.
She and her mother are hoping for
an automatic door opener to let Smith, 50, open the door from the family
room to the garage herself. A ramp from that door would let her into the
garage, where she can reach the garage door opener.
Her hands are too contracted and
her wheelchair too large to get her close enough now to the knob on the
36-inch door.
Her mother, Marie Smith, 73, is her
only caregiver. Marie Smith has high blood pressure, heart problems and
osteoporosis.
If her mother were ever hospitalized,
at a doctor's appointment or out shopping, Paula Smith would be trapped
if a fire broke out.
"She couldn't get out of the home,"
Marie Smith said.
Having two cataract surgeries this
year and a stent placed in her heart, a procedure that put her in the hospital
overnight, made Marie Smith realize her daughter's vulnerability in her
absence.
Newspaper with a Heart is The Ledger's
annual fund-raising effort to give short-term help to some local families
and individuals in financial need.
Newspaper with a Heart is designed
primarily for people stricken with unexpected loss of income, predominantly
due to illness or injury. The program sometimes is asked, however, to supply
assistance such as this to people who fall through the cracks of other
programs.
What the nonprofit program can accomplish
each year depends on donations.
Twenty years of battling multiple
sclerosis have weakened Paula Smith's body, but her spirit remains strong.
She worked until 1994 as a property
title examiner, she said.
Looking for a way to work out of
her home, she resumed classes at Polk Community College. In August 2000,
she received a degree in health information management.
"I pretty well specialized in coding,
the diagnostic coding and the finance part . . . for payment purposes,"
she said.
She said that with national certification
as a registered health information technologist and using her voice-recognition
computer, she wants to work with medical records from her home.
"If you get the right system, and
know what you're doing, and get the right person to install it, it works
like a breeze," she said of the specialized computer.
Although both hands are contracted
into fists, she is able to feed herself and write a little.
Polk County Elderly Services and
the Center for Independent Living, which works with people who have disabilities,
referred her to Newspaper with a Heart. The automatic door opener, with
battery back-up, would cost between $700 and $1,000, said Fred Meyling,
the center's Polk County director.
"How would you feel having no control
of being able to get in and out of your home in the case of emergency?"
Meyling said. "It's a quality of life issue, and it would be giving her
control over at least one thing in her life."
Newspaper with a Heart's registration
number with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
is SC-12293. All contributions are spent on Newspaper with a Heart clients.
© 2001 The Ledger
By ROBIN WILLIAMS ADAMS
The Ledger