PULSE Terri became a member of the Amputee Coalition of America, which works to raise awareness about and increase practices to prevent limb loss while ensuring that no amputee feels alone and their families live life to the fullest after amputation. She has found herself working as a speaker and a lobbyist dedicated to changing laws to benefit people living with limb loss. Terri and her friends, Sonya Windt and Melissa Baldwin also started a durable medical equipment recycling effort in Paducah that fits in well with her advocacy to bring Medicare up to speed with the need of amputees. As Sonya says, “Shower chairs are considered luxury items for Medicare. Tell me how you are going to take a shower safely without a shower chair if you have one leg.” Sonya has been Terri’s friend since the fourth grade and “before and after she had her accident, I have been there,” Sonya says. Tey placed newspaper ads asking for donations of any type of durable medical equipment. Te most needed items are wheel chairs, walkers, shower chairs and potty chairs. But they will accept equipment donated. Tey have been so successful collecting and providing what are called “DME,” that the United Steel Workers Hall in Paducah is loaded down, as well as Terri’s home. “It’s just blowing people’s minds that we are doing this on our own and out of our cars,” Sonya says. 68 JULY 2014 Now Terri is working on the next level looking to create a statewide partnership. She is orchestrating the startup, Project CARAT Paducah. CARAT, Coordinating and Assisting the Reuse of Assistive Technology, seeks to make assistive technology and DME more accessible to Kentuckians in need. To accomplish this, Project CARAT, in collaboration with the Kentucky Appalachian Rural Rehabilitation Network is partnering with agencies across the commonwealth – like Terri’s — to take donated equipment, clean it, make any needed repairs, and redistribute it to people who need it. Terri says her group is looking to secure a building for a permanent location, “a front door where people in need of durable equipment – or who are looking to donate durable equipment – have a place to find,” and where DME can be stored, repaired, sanitized and given or loaned as the need requires. Te sanitizer the group seeks is an incredible piece of equipment, Terri says. “It’s called a HubScrub … . It looks like a huge dishwasher; you roll a wheelchair in, push a button and it comes out sanitized.” Despite her desire to keep going, without ever slowing down and certainly not being brought to a stop, Terri found herself in surgery again on May 15. She was having a total knee replacement to her left leg, her whole leg, and once again found herself at the mercy of the DME she desperately seeks for others. “I learned that it is hard to be completely dependent on your prosthesis. When your sound leg goes down it becomes difficult to move around at all without a chair.” But Terri said she, her family and her doctor took advanced steps to make sure she was able to get out of bed – even to take just a few steps – on the first day after surgery.” It was so painful, but Terri kept trudging along. In less than a month, she was walking with no evidence the right knee surgery ever happened. “It is really hard to keep me down,” she said. Anyone interested in volunteering to help out Project CARAT Paducah – a couple days a week in an office accepting donations or once a month making repairs – Terri says they would be welcome. Training will start soon, so call Terri at 270-488-3020. n PROMOTING EVENTS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE INTHEVUE.COM
