Jewish Home Lifecare :: Caring as individual as you

His First Trip Out in 20 Years

Ramon Villar’s only contact with the outside world was a rare visit to a hospital emergency room.
Now, thanks to the intervention of Cynthia McDaniel, a registered nurse with Jewish Home Lifecare’s Home Care program, Mr. Villar has been out of bed, sitting in a wheelchair, and enjoying the outdoors
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His First Trip Out in 20 Years
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His First Trip Out in 20 Years

For the last 20 years, Ramon Villar’s only contact with the outside world was a rare visit to a hospital emergency room.

Now, thanks to the intervention of Cynthia McDaniel, a registered nurse with Jewish Home Lifecare’s Home Care program, Mr. Villar has been out of bed, sitting in a wheelchair, and enjoying the outdoors, including warm weather, sunshine and a view quite different from inside the apartment he shares with his wife,Clotilde Jimenez, also a Jewish Home Lifecare Home Care client.

In 1989, Mr. Vallar, now 98, suffered a spinal cord injury as a result of a fall off a ladder while working as a carpenter.  Since then he has been bedbound and homebound, confined to his bedroom.  The care he has received from his home health aides Eugenia Valdez and Energinia Vasquez has prevented his skin from breaking down and forming bed sores, a most remarkable feat for someone confined to bed for 20 years.

Susan Rappaport, a Jewish Home Lifecare social worker, has also worked with Ramon and Clotilde, assisting the couple with supportive counseling and information on available funding for his medical needs.

Not long ago, Nurse Coordinator Cynthia McDaniel was assigned to Ramon’s case.  During her weekly visits, Ramon was treated to a therapeutic backrub, a therapy he thoroughly enjoys. Nurse McDaniel also asked him when he last sat in his living room and enjoyed looking out the window.  “Never,” he replied.

Together they planned a strategy and looked forward to accomplishing that Herculean task. Cynthia first arranged for an escort and a translator and with the aide of a hoyer lift they were able to get him into a reclining wheelchair and placed in front of his living room window where he could feel the sunshine on his face and arms, an accomplishment that produced a broad smile that lit up his face and eyes.

A few weeks later, with the aid of escort/translator Javon Jones, Ramon was dressed in his favorite blue pajama bottoms along with a blue shirt, white cap and sunglasses and took his much anticipated first trip outdoors in two decades.

Leaving the apartment with his wife by his side, he was wheeled into the elevator, down a ramp and into the outside world and a neighboring park.  For a man who once enjoyed building furniture, dancing with his wife and feeling the wind in his hair, he was now ecstatic with the view of his once familiar neighborhood and the fast cars whizzing by.

He and Cynthia McDaniel, along with Clotilde and the rest of the Jewish Home Lifecare Home Care staff, are planning Ramon’s next trip to the neighborhood park and the world beyond.

Thanks to a visionary nurse and the dedicated Jewish Home Lifecare staff, this continues to be an amazing experience for someone with a spinal cord injury who hasn’t ventured outside his bedroom in almost a quarter of a century.