Continuing the project in Punakha

​Last week I continued my project in Punakha and visited 8 of the 11 gewogs (communities), working with 25 families. This time, we also met many elderly people with disabilities. Some of them had developed remarkably practical and creative ways of coping with their limitations.

One encounter that stayed with me was with a 93-year-old man who had lost the use of his legs due to an illness 23 years ago. The family no longer knows exactly what the illness was. Despite this, he had found a way to remain mobile. In this environment, wheelchairs are simply not practical, as door thresholds are often more than 20 cm high. Instead, the family devised another solution.

He still has good use of his arms and moves by pushing himself along the floor in a seated position. To prevent his skin from being constantly injured, they made a leather seat for him to sit on. He holds this piece of leather in place with a string between his teeth so that he does not slide off while using both hands to move forward. In this way, he can enter the house, reach his room, and even move outside to the place where he spends most of his day sitting. Through this improvised solution, he has managed to stay mobile and avoid being confined to his bed.

​In another family, the situation was quite different. They had not found a creative solution, so the daughter lifted her elderly mother every day from the bed into the wheelchair and then back again in the evening. This placed a great physical strain on her, as her mother weighs considerably more than she does. While the men in the family work in the fields and the children attend school, the middle-aged daughter is alone at home with her mother throughout the day and is responsible for all her care.

When I offered to show her a way to help her mother transfer into the wheelchair without lifting, she was very open to learning. She told us that her mother had fallen more than ten years ago and broken her leg, and since then she has not been able to walk. As a result, she uses a wheelchair—fortunately, their house is much more suitable for wheelchair use than many others in the area. The main difficulty is transferring her into and out of the wheelchair.

When I first demonstrated the transfer technique, I was slightly nervous about whether it would work safely. There was a risk of the mother losing balance and falling, especially because the bed was significantly higher than the wheelchair. We therefore had to find a way to raise the height of the mother’s feet and used a narrow piece of wood we found outside. In addition, the wheelchair brakes were no longer very reliable, and despite having someone translate for me, there was still a language barrier. The circumstances were far from ideal—but we decided to try.

I first had the daughter practise the movement with me, so she could get a feel for the technique with someone who could react if something went wrong. She then practised with a heavier man before I allowed her to try it with her mother. I was astonished at how quickly she understood the concept of the transfer and how well she managed it the very first time with her mother. I felt a great sense of relief.

Before beginning, I checked whether the mother was still able to bear some weight on her legs, as this would be an important resource during the transfer. Once we established that she could still take some weight—despite being unable to stand fully—she was highly motivated to practise. Using kinaesthetic techniques, the daughter was then able to help her mother into the wheelchair without lifting her weight at all. She was visibly astonished and deeply grateful, and the mother appreciated it just as much, as being carried had never been comfortable for her.