My name is William Coleman, I was born in Pittsburgh in 1931. I am age 77, married with two children, four grandchildren and one great grandson. I've long been a lifelong...
More »My name is William Coleman, I was born in Pittsburgh in 1931. I am age 77, married with two children, four grandchildren and one great grandson. I've long been a lifelong resident of the city of Pittsburgh and currently a resident in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. I am retired although I have an active live engaged in public service activities serving on the boards of several nonprofit organizations in the city and also serving as the treasurer of the HRC Employees Credit Union at HealthSouth Palmerville. I became disabled at the age of 13 in 1945. I was injured playing basketball in school. I did not break anything, I recall the incident of hitting my head on the floor when I was in gym class, felt some pains in my chest and everything, I was a little bit dizzy. Went into the locker-room after class, got dressed and walked up three flights up stairs to my next class. I was sitting there and my leg became to feel numb. I said, well let me get up and stretch my legs to go up to the pencil sharpener, and as I did, I feel over who is now my wife. At which time the teacher began to recognize that something was wrong. It took her and some boys to carry me down to the doctor's office which was a room with a cot. I stayed there for three hours before the doctor came to see me. Next morning I woke up I could not feel anything from the chest down. Bowel was gone, the bladder was gone, and all feeling from the naval down was gone. I woke up screaming on that one and they had to pull the covers back to show that my legs were still there. Ultimately, the feelings slowly began to come back again, took months for that to occur. But by the fact that the spine wasn't broken it was good on my part. They said it was a blood clot in the neck that interfered with the blood flow that caused the paralysis and became a quadriplegic and from that point on I've lived a pretty full life, I've had a lot of good rehabilitation associated with my ah, work life when I was employed at Harmerville and I having been disabled now for over six decades I truly been blessed to have made it to this point. And I can easily identify how it is that I got here, number one, I have been blessed the Lord has been good to me, I've had an excellent family. Family is consisted originally of my parents and one sibling who is still living. I've been married now for 42 years to a lady who has really enhanced my life as well as two children which she brought into the marriage and four grandchildren that have occurred since then. In addition to that I have been a recipient of a lot of things that have occurred through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania particularly the office of vocational rehabilitation. They helped to educate me through what was business school. They were instrumental in my getting the only job that I ever had in life was working at the Harmerville Rehabilitation Center. And they also assisted me with assistant devices such as wheelchairs the installation of my elevator, a handicapped accessible bathroom and other things. In addition to that, they also were instrumental in helping to modify my van when I got it some years ago to help me travel about independently. Along with that, others that I can mention, I’ve been blessed to have excellent health care. I’ve also been blessed to have excellent physicians. And as health is deteriorating with age as it happens with all of us I’m still able to impact the health system in a manner that I’m very happy about. As with anything your capacity of independence diminishes with time and that has happened with me but in order to enable me to stay home, I now have home health through the Commonwealth and that brings about home healthcare to the average of about 21 hours a week. And without that I would probably be in a nursing home because this enables my wife not to kill herself having to take care of me. So I’m very happy to have that and hope that it continues for a long time. I did only home bound studies. The system wasn’t very generous in allowing those persons who were disabled to go to school. That was it; most buildings weren’t designed to enable us to get around in a wheelchair. So I did homebound studies then I had two days a week approximately two and a half to three hours each day for days a week. Then I took my GED and got it that way. Rehabilitation was really ah, really begun to get hold as results of guys coming out of World War II who were injured and wounded. It was in its infancy whenever I became injured my first stay in the hospital immediately after getting injured in school was a children’s hospital. I broke down substantially with Decubitis on my bum and that was because I was just in a bed, they just layed you in bed and gave you oxygen to prevent so you can breath and in those days it wasn’t a little nasal oxygen it was a big tent. Nine months there and a large portion of that time was as a result of trying to cure the Decubitis. In 1948 I went to the Woodville County home which is on the grounds of Woodville. And when I tell people I was at Woodville and they know it was a mental institution I tell them no, I was on the other side of the wall. The county had started a rehab there with makeshift equipment and I spent a year and a half there it was a rather depressing place. First of all it was segregated, it was a county operated facility that was totally racially segregated, I was a teenager. However, the year and a half went by and you learn to survive and live in an environment that wasn’t very healthy. I don’t think there was any discrimination in the quality of care; I think it was just bad! The people who were there were just uncaring and in many instances at that time they were political appointees.
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