Team effort gets ramp built for woman in need of help


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  • | 12:00 p.m. January 11, 2016
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Builders Care, students from the UNF Construction Management program and David Hatcher of Construction Specialties of North Florida completed a wheelchair ramp for Mary Joan Prohaska. Prohaska, who suffers from chronic debilitating back pain and other...
Builders Care, students from the UNF Construction Management program and David Hatcher of Construction Specialties of North Florida completed a wheelchair ramp for Mary Joan Prohaska. Prohaska, who suffers from chronic debilitating back pain and other...
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Builders Care partners with many agencies in Northeast Florida.

For example, Builders Care received a call from Karen Waker with an area dialysis center about one of her patients, Mary Joan Prohaska, who was in need of a wheelchair ramp.

She had been on a waiting list for a ramp with another nonprofit for more than two years.

Prohaska has scoliosis and degenerative disk disease in her back and has been in constant pain since 2000. She falls down easily and it is increasingly difficult for her to get around unassisted.

In 2014, she had kidney failure. She also has a stint in her heart and she has diabetes. Because of these additional health concerns, doctors consider surgery a high risk and will not operate on her back. Without surgery, she most likely will live the rest of her life with crippling back pain.

University of North Florida construction management students, along with their professor David Hacker (who owns Construction Specialties of North Florida), came out to build this ramp Nov. 14.

This ramp means Prohaska will be able to use her Hoveround to get in and out of her home.

She and her husband, Jerry, feel so blessed that Builders Care has been able to provide them with this ramp.

 

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