In its commitment to returning to its core mission, Builders Care recently assisted a young patient whose family needed to modify their house to be able to provide care at home.
The story was brought to the attention of Builders Care by Rebecca LaFerriere, a pediatric home-health nurse.
Elijah is a 12-year-old boy whose massive asthma attack last year had a catastrophic impact on his life.
“He went from being a regular kid to a total-care patient just like that,” LaFerriere said. “Elijah, his mother and his sister are staying at grandma’s house now. The house is big enough, but certain sections of the house are unlivable. They have two bathrooms, but only one that is working, and that one is difficult for Elijah to access.”
LaFerriere had assessed the situation and believed it would be “an amazing project.”
She said there was an unused room on the other side of the non-working bathroom, and that it was far enough away from Elijah’s current room so the construction dust wouldn’t bother him much.
He breathes through a trach tube so extreme caution is needed. Relocating him would give him a bathroom that would meet his needs. Her plan was to give Elijah his own entrance for his wheelchair and connect him to his mom’s room through the bathroom
Elijah’s grandmother cares for foster children as well as her own. Some are supported and some simply have no other place to go. She takes them to church every Sunday and during the week. She works two jobs, but they never seem to have any extra money.
She gave the master bedroom up to her daughter and granddaughter. The non-working bathroom is in there. It stopped working and they don’t have the money to fix it. Elijah’s room was next to his mother’s room down a narrow hall way.
“Elijah’s mother Erika told me the story about what happened to him,” said Justin Brown, Builders Care executive director. “On Sept. 2, Elijah was at school. He asked his teacher if he could go to the bathroom.
When he stood up he became sick and threw up. He went immediately to the nurse’s office.
He was having a massive asthma attack, and he used his inhaler until it was empty. So his mother picked him up from school and took him home to administer an asthma treatment.
It didn’t work nor did a second treatment, so she took him to the emergency room. As they walked into the hospital, Elijah collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. It took the doctors 10 minutes to bring him back. The prolonged lack of oxygen left both sides of his brain virtually dead.”
Builders Care agreed with LaFerriere that there was a definite need, and that Builders Care could help. The first step was to widen doorways.
“Elijah’s room was directly across from the bathroom, but the bathroom door was only 24 inches wide,” Brown said. “His bedroom door was 29 inches. They have a lift so that they can move him, but the lift is 29 inches wide. So they had his bedroom door unhinged at the bottom so that they could use the lift, but barely. Bathing Elijah required two of them carrying him through this narrow door.”
Builder’s Care hired one of its NEFBA contractors, Lewis Enterprises, to widen both doors, move the electrical wiring accordingly, and build a small ramp for the step at the front door.
Now that the critical issue, handicap accessibility for Elijah is solved, Lewis Enterprises has been hired to fix the other bathroom. The water leaks from the shower into the closet,
“We want to make sure the second bathroom is working again for this family,” Brown said. “They take care of each other and even beyond their own family. We can ease their daily care for Elijah and that is what we are here to do.”