LaShawn’s Independence Day — June 29, 2015
Lives are composed of a series of days, and LaShawn, a resident of Clare Housing’s Care Homes and an Army Veteran, has had more than her fair share of days of struggle. But she’s also known days of tremendous joy.
On a day in 1989, LaShawn contracted HIV. It would be on a day a full ten years later in 1999, after serious illness and several misdiagnoses, that she was finally diagnosed HIV positive. By then, after over 3,600 days of the virus living unchecked in her blood stream, illness had taken its toll.
A mother of five, LaShawn found herself in a wheelchair. “I haven’t walked for 20 years,” she explained to me during our recent interview.
To her, LaShawn says that freedom and independence is the ability to make her bed and empty out her own trash can each morning. “It seems like a little thing,” she admits, “But to do it from the wheel chair it’s overcoming an obstacle.” Thanks to her own tenacity, those obstacles are becoming smaller and smaller with each passing day.
On the day LaShawn first moved to a Clare Housing Care Home 13 years ago, her health had reached an all-time low. She weighed less than 90 lbs. Thriving wasn’t her focus then, it was survival. She regained her health over the next 9 years, but what she longed for most of all – independence, seemed an impossible dream.
That all started to change one day four years ago when LaShawn began aquatic therapy at the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute. There in the warm buoyant water of the therapy pool, LaShawn got the chance to feel what it was like to stand and walk again for the first time in 16 years. It was a revelation. She’s been going back every week, two days a week since then.
“I feel very energized whenever I can accomplish some task in the pool,” LaShawn says. “I work hard at it. It’s a challenge but it’s something that I enjoy doing.” At first each step was an achievement. Now LaShawn measures her success in miles. She keeps a tally of them on the wall at the Care Home where she lives. So far she’s walked over 50.
Each mile is more than just another tick mark – it’s progress towards a goal LaShawn once thought might be out of her reach forever, living independently in her own home. On a winter’s day just a few months ago, LaShawn got the news that she is finally healthy enough to get her own apartment. For the first time in 30 years, she has the independence to get a place of her very own.
She was thrilled. “I’m like a little kid at Christmas time, I can just see it — how different it will be. I’m a very private person…I’m looking forward to decorating it my own way, and having my own front door I can close when I want time by myself. ”
“I’ve found that living with AIDS, it’s bad, but it’s not something that people can’t deal with,” LaShawn reports. “Even though you suffer, keep on trying.”
Life is a series of days. LaShawn has had many days over her lifetime, both joyful and sad: the day she was diagnosed with HIV, and the day she found she could no longer walk, the days she’s celebrated the birthdays of her grand babies, and the day she stood and walked again in the Courage Kenny pool for the first time in 16 years.
On a morning sometime soon, LaShawn will wake up to a new day. It will be the day she gets the keys to her own apartment. And that day will be LaShawn’s Independence Day.
You Can Honor the Steps LaShawn Has Taken
It’s summer, and hopefully you’ve been out walking in the sunshine, or enjoying time by a Minnesota lake.
The next time that you’re in the water or out walking, think about LaShawn and the accomplishment each step in the therapy pool is for her. If you were moved by her story, you can make a donation in honor of the many steps she’s taken to regain her health and independence.
So far, LaShawn has walked 50 miles in the therapy pool! An automatic once-a-year donation of $50 from you in honor of LaShawn’s accomplishments will help us provide supportive services to all 16 individuals living in our Care Homes!
You can make your secure, tax-deductible donation online here. Thank you for supporting LaShawn and residents like her!