Instant Change

I have an ongoing series on this blog that gives a brief description of some of the homes and characters I have worked for over the years. A full list of these posts is on the sidebar under 'Homes I Know'.

I was called to this home a number of years ago when the owners had to make some major alterations to accommodate a wheelchair. I had never met these people before and noted that the man of the house was quite a bit younger than me, and was the one in the wheelchair. I noticed he was not too adept with his transportation and soon found out that he had only come home from the hospital a few months previous. He had been a meat cutter at a local supermarket, making a good living. He loved his recreation, or at least used to.

He told me how he had been into ATV's (all terrain vehicles) and was out one weekend enjoying the trails around their cabin in the wilderness. He was not fooling around or even going fast, but turned around a bend in the trail and the front wheel hit a tree root that was jutting above the trail. The ATV flipped forward and he was thrown over the vehicle, hit a tree, and broke his neck. He was instantly paralysed from the waist down.

His words to me were, "Life is good, you are having a great time in the outdoors, doing what you love, when suddenly, in the blink of an eye, your life changes. As much as you want to take the moment back and do something differently, you cannot, and forever, your life is altered." He had tears in his eyes as he slowly and clumsily wheeled into his bedroom, where he stayed for the rest of the day.