Home >One Quadriplegic’s Extraordinary View of the World
Lust For Life
One Quadriplegic’s Extraordinary View of the World
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On any given day, Yonkers resident Kathleen Joyce Hager, 51, may drive her Town & Country minivan up-county to hang out with friends in Shrub Oak, or ride the railroad to New York City to take in a show or museum. She might shop at her neighborhood supermarket or spend the morning on the phone as she prepares to practice law in the healthcare field. Or, you could find her surfing the Net, e-mailing her children and playing with her companion Jack Russell terrier, all while supervising a carpenter building a closet in her waterfront apartment with a million-dollar view of the Hudson River and Palisades.
Hardly the stuff of headlines, you say? True, until you realize that, since a swimming pool accident on August 18, 1984, Kathy has had very limited use of her body, with some motion only in her shoulders, arms and wrists, but not her hands, typical of a C5/6 quadriplegic. Kathy works to the max with what she’s got and daily accomplishes what some might think impossible. A home visit with Kathy Hager is a crash course in moxie and positive attitude.
Not that it’s been easy. Following her accident, Kathy had to deal with a difficult divorce, raising two young children as a single parent, losing her house of 20 years, this while seeking meaning in her sea-changed life.
“When I had my accident,” explains Kathy,” I was 31, working in a carpet store. I had two kids, 7 and 9, and was going to college part time. My husband and I owned a house, and I did a lot of work in it, papering, painting, putting down floors, putting up sheetrock, all the demolition, and a lot of the gardening. I was a very active person when I got into that pool at a friend’s birthday party and my life changed forever.” Kathy entered Northern Westchester Hospital for two months, moved to the Burke Rehabilitation Institute for ten additional months, and came home 5 days short of a year.
What of her two children? “The good news was they survived,” says Kathy. “They stayed with family and friends in the beginning, and my sister, a doctor, got us a babysitter.”
The big question being asked of Kathy was, when are you going to get home? “Everyone wants to know when you’re going to leave rehab and go home, as if it’s some sort of panacea, and everything’s going to be all right. In fact, coming home was very fearful because I no longer had 24-hour staff, or multiple staffs, and my house wasn’t a safe haven anymore.
“Home was a place where I wanted to be, but was scared to be. It took quite a long time to get used to that, and to be in that place, at home, without being able to do much of anything physically. However, the most important thing, which keeps me surviving to this day, that I could do, was be a mother to my children, and that was my constant choice.”
At the same time, Kathy endeavored on a path of personal achievement. In 1986, she resumed her undergraduate studies at Pace University in Pleasantville. “Their computer science department was upstairs without an elevator,” she relates, “so I chose history. It wasn’t a bad choice – I loved it!” When Kathy graduated in 1990, one of her professors at Pace “out of the blue” suggested that she attend law school.
“I always wanted to be a lawyer,” says Kathy, “but I never thought I could because I didn’t have the opportunity. I went to Pace University School of Law in White Plains and received my J.D. degree in 1998, also completing a Health Law Certificate, an obvious choice for me.” After some continuing studies, she was admitted to the Bar in 2000. Since then, she has performed legal work for several clients and plans to grow her practice.
Amidst all this, Kathy also became an accomplished driver. “When they told me I could drive, I was a bit scared, being a paralyzed person being placed at the wheel of a car. But, I trusted them, the physical therapist and occupational therapists who made the initial assessment. They told me I could have the physical capacity to drive and that they would recommend a driving evaluator and the required equipment.”
In 1990, Kathy acquired her first van outfitted to serve her needs. “I drove it for 11 years,” she recalls, “until September 19, 2001, when it finally died. At this point, the equipment, although state-of-the-art when I first got it, was archaic, and I needed a replacement. The question was, How do I get a new van, and get it modified. It was not a great time to do fundraising, since this was 8 days following 9/11.”
To modify a vehicle, Kathy could obtain financial assistance from VESID, Vocation Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities, an agency of the New York State Department of Education that assists disabled people returning to work. But first she needed to get herself a van, and at least $30,000 to pay for it.
“We waited about a year,” Kathy recalls. “My family and friends approached various merchants and were able to get donations of things like airline tickets and overnight stays at New York City hotels to raffle off, plus I purchased a laptop computer to add to the raffle, so we had 4 or 5 good prizes to offer. We had a big drawing party at Rory Dolan’s in Yonkers in December of 2003, and I got about $20,000 from the raffle.”
Additional help came from the Connecticut-based Obie Harrington-Howes Foundation, referred to Kathy by a law school friend. Formed by a man who suffered a spinal cord injury and used some of the money raised for him to help others with similar conditions, the Foundation offered to match whatever Kathy raised on her own, up to $15,000.
Explains Kathy: “This gave me the money I needed to buy the van, after which VESID modified it for my needs. Braun, a wheelchair company that works in tandem with Chrysler, put together what they call the Enter Van, where they lower the floor right at their factory and install the automated door and the lift. DriveMaster in New Jersey did the rest of the work. It took about a year to get the finished van, partly because they have to crash-test these vans just like all others.”
Next, Kathy had to learn how to drive this new vehicle, “a much more sophisticated instrument than I was used to. It has several computers installed in it, which my previous van did not. My driving instructor was a wonderful guy named Rich Neid, from the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey. He makes you feel very comfortable doing what you’re doing, even though it’s a very scary proposition.”
Mastering this new challenge took awhile, since, according to Kathy, “we had to work on placement of the controls, and, in the meantime, I had to get a new wheelchair, which locks in place as the driver’s seat, to safely operate the vehicle. I finally got to take the van home just recently, in February ’05.”
When Kathy is not out and about, home care figures prominently in her ability to carry on her life.
“In the 20 years I’ve been disabled,” she relates, “the only single group of people who I can say, without exception, are the most responsible and professional, are those who work for Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester. That is a wonderful compliment, but also a sad testament to the delivery of healthcare services to the home population. I’ve worked with a number of different agencies and healthcare professionals, so I have a lot to base this on. The nurses there (at VNSW) are personable, professional, competent, and one would think that this is the way they all should be everywhere, but I can assure you that they are not. Also, over the past 19 years, I have been attended by a veritable legion of faithful, wonderful home health aides, most of whom I still call my dear friends.”
And what of Kathy’s primary goal, to be a great mom?
Beams Kathy: “My son Michael Hager, who is 29, graduated the Worchester Polytechnic Institute and Pace University School of Law, the same law school I attended, and today he is a Professional Engineer construction law attorney. My daughter, Karen Hager, 28, graduated from Northeastern University and is a research coordinator at the NYU Cardiovascular Research Center.
“Raising my children to become these remarkable adults has been the hardest and best job I’ve ever done!”
