IN addition to writing this column each week, I also get the opportunity – from time to time – to give regular talks on disability to members of the public.
Last week, was another such occasion.
However, rather than the usual presentation sessions which I give to kids in schools, religious groups or to the disabled and elderly communities and others, this time my group of audience was rather unique.
They were all doctors of rehabilitation medicine or healthcare experts involved in one way or another in the particular scientific field.
More than a dozen of them came to hear my lunchtime talk in a government hospital in Kuala Lumpur. The meeting was arranged for me by a top rehabilitation physician of the hospital.
My job, dubbed by my disability activist friends, was a virtual “mission impossible” task.
I was to speak on animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and its immense health benefits to human beings, particularly for those with disabilities and the elderly.
My mission that afternoon was to sensitize the awareness levels of the healthcare workers present about how my own interaction with my personal pets had brought about significant changes in my life as a person born with a disability.
Some of them were even dramatic in a positive way.
Although I have been disabled for nearly half a century, it was not until the last more than ten years of my life that were my most fulfilling and rewarding. That was when my wonderful dogs came into my life.
I recall having butterflies in my stomach all week in just preparing for the talk. I felt like Ethan Hawk (in a wheelchair) of the Mission Impossible movie fame.
Except that there would be no special effects wizardry in this mission but only my words and a VCD projector to get my message across.
I was given only 30-minutes to make a lasting impression on the healthcare experts.
The fact that I was also president of Malaysia’s first and only AAT registered society for the elderly and the disabled called Petpositive made my task even more imperative.
One of our chief objectives is to set up AAT-clinics and centres all across the country so that senior and handicapped persons – wherever they are - can come to in order to receive regular therapy from pets of all kinds.
This can be done as a complementary or even as an alternative form of healthcare treatment for their conditions.
When the final reckoning moment came, I showed the good doctors two original videos that were produced locally.
One was on how Petpositive’s aquarium therapy for a spastic quadriplegic young lady had made a difference in her life despite some healthcare workers having given up on the individual.
The second was how my service dogs regularly help me overcome my daily challenges at home.
My dogs are fully trained to open and shut doors before me, push my wheelchair and run up and downstairs on errands for me. They can even retrieve essential objects for me such as my urinal and other things related to my disability needs.
Despite these amazing feats, I pointed out to the doctors that it is my canines’ daily ability to help me keep depression at bay which is what I appreciate most from their companionship.
I related to them of an incident last year when one of my canines zeroed in on a nasty pressure sore that was surreptitiously forming on one of my paralysed feet without my realising it.
The discovery landed me in hospital in time where a surgery was done immediately in order to save my infected limb rather than have it amputated.
However what was disappointing was that during my nine days of hospitalisation and total rest in bed, the medical doctors who investigated on my condition did not seem the least bit concerned or interested in how my dogs had played a pivotal role in my healthcare – or having got me to them in time in the first place.
I also regret that the government hospital in which I was warded did not have a room reserved for AAT when there were scores of other rooms for all types of treatment.
Even though I consider myself to be a positive thinking person, I must admit that the nine days of being confined in bed started to get me depressed little by little as the days progressed.
And none of the smiling doctors and the nurses in front of me had a clue as to what was going on inside of me as my pet dog, on the other hand, would have detected almost instantaneously.
Let’s face it, it’s much more fun anytime to grab a kiss or to hug a warm and lovable pet than a stiff thermometer or cold stethoscope offered by a healthcare worker dressed in white, was my concluding remark at my talk.
Everyone listened with pin drop silence.
No comments:
Post a Comment