Larry Browning: My Boss

       When you deeply respect your boss, then your job becomes much more worthwhile and perhaps enjoyable. That was definitely the case for me when I became Larry Browning's morning caregiver. It was not an easy job. There were a lot of details I had to learn; and the work of caring for a man suffering from quadriplegia was not a joy in and of itself. However, Larry as a person, was a joy to work for.
       The following excerpt from my book, Mornings with Larry: Life Lessons from a Man in a Wheelchair, describes my first few days as Larry's caregiver. I hope you're blessed by it. The book is available through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HNQKB1L

Mornings with Larry is available through Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HNQKB1L

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Excerpt from Chapter One:

Scared to Meet You, Larry

 

       On day one, Ann introduced me to Evan, my trainer for the next two mornings. That first day, I simply observed him. He began by filling a small plastic container with about a dozen pills and pouring milk into a small glass.
We entered Larry’s bedroom, where he lay on his back on a hospital bed, his upper body inclined about forty degrees. He was awake and smiling.
“Morning, boss,” said Evan.
“Morning, Evan,” said Larry. He looked at me with his still-functional right eye. “How you doing, Tom?”
“Alright, Larry,” I said. “How about yourself?” Oops. That was my first mistake. A few weeks later I would learn that it bothers Larry when people greet him with questions such as, “How you doing, brother?”, “How’s it going?” or, ahem, “How about yourself?”  Sometimes he’s tempted to give a testy answer, such as, “How do you think I’m doing?” However, his verbal responses are always polite.
“Pretty good,” he answered me.
The greetings ended and I observed Evan as he performed the seemingly endless tasks required to care for a quadriplegic person. I had no idea all the details involved—and they needed to be done in the correct order. Squeamishness was the least of my worries.
By the end of three hours, Evan and all other caregivers on planet earth had won my respect. How would my forty-nine year old brain ever remember all this stuff?
On day two, I worked and Evan directed. Sure enough, I remembered little. Evan coached me through the routine, much of which involved learning how to properly move Larry’s body. Upon waking, he had to be moved, via a Hoyer (a crane-like lift), from his bed to the shower, then to the wheelchair. After breakfast, he needed to be raised from his wheelchair onto the therapeutic standing frame, where he stood for thirty minutes before being lowered back into the wheelchair. Fighting gravity is not easy.

Larry at the Roseburg VA,
being interviewed by me (April 2011)

     All this movement meant that poor Larry had to endure this newbie inefficiently shifting/jerking him all over the place. In the middle of it all, he and Evan got into a lighthearted debate over whether or not Larry was dead weight.
“Believe me, boss,” said Evan, “you’re dead weight.”
“Nah,” said Larry. “I’m live weight.”
At the end of day two, I reluctantly said goodbye to Evan and never saw him again. I was on my own.
Evan did great as a trainer, but I wanted a few more days with him. I felt ill-prepared to care for Larry by myself. That night I couldn’t sleep. I began day three sleep-deprived, overwhelmed and full of doubts about whether I could do the job.
Fortunately, Larry knew the routine better than anyone, and for the next several weeks he coached me through the sequences, reminding me every time I missed a step. To this day, Larry reminds me when I forget things—such as connecting the urine collection bag to the catheter. You don’t want to forget that.
More than two years have passed since those first training days, and I’m still a bit scared to see Larry each morning. To encounter him is to be confronted with his hard life, a life that’s incomprehensible to those who are healthy. To understand my brother fully would require that I lose the use of my arms, legs—and eyes.
In Larry’s words: “Being handicapped is something that—until you’ve experienced it—you really know little about it. I never would have been able to relate to someone in a wheelchair without having been in one myself. I know people who’ve spent a day in a wheelchair, and they have discovered the difficulties, but again, it’s nothing like being confined to a wheelchair for life, because there is no hope at the end of the day that I’ll be able to get out of this.”
Most nights, Larry sleeps well, but occasionally he experiences insomnia. Nobody likes to lose sleep, but at least healthy people can toss and turn, get up, perhaps make a snack or read for a while.
Larry likens a sleepless night to being buried alive. “I feel like my body is a casket; I’m inside it and I can’t get out.”
Certainly there’s truth to the saying: “You can’t really understand a man until you’ve walked in his shoes.” But in reality, we don’t walk in each other’s shoes. In every relationship there will be gaps of unknowing mixed with areas of common ground. But even if we can’t always relate, sometimes it’s just nice to hang out and enjoy each other’s mysteries. And Larry has mastered the art of hangin’ with people.