Rhino's Ramblings - My Cousin Maggie This Year's Friendly Holiday Reminder

By Robert Thomas - Opinion/Commentary

As a young child I remember a distant cousin Maggie confined to a wheelchair.

As a child I always sort of thought it was so cool how she got to ride around on wheels.

For me those we use to call “cripples” or “wheelchair bound” are just people like the rest of us. Times are changing for the better.

I never really thought how being confined to a wheelchair truly affected her life and most importantly how she ended up in a wheelchair to begin with.

I was always told she was born that way.

As a young child in the much safer and naive world of what was the late 1960’s it was believable and really at that age all children are impressionable.

As I got older one day I learnt the truth about what really happened.

Her life was not one of happiness but one of misery and she was not born that way. It was in fact a great family secret hidden away in shame with the truth and reality of it never to be spoken about again. The sad truth was it was all steeped in teenage rebellion and the seemingly need to be free from the bonds of childhood as the years of adulthood loom just in front of us.

Maggie was "crippled" because she had not listened to her mother who begged Maggie not to go with some friends driving because they were drinking. They had an accident Maggie was thrown free of the vehicle and the car had rolled over her severing her spinal cord turning her into a parapalegic.

She was just 16 years old.

To hide her shame younger members of the family were always told she was born that way. This was the late 1960's it was how things worked - sweep it under the rug.

We never were told the truth about the accident the same as we were not told the real truth about her life. The family loved her and she even found love and got married. But it wasn't until later after she was gone I finally heard the reality about her life.

In many ways it was a life of challenges.

Maybe the best way to tell the real story why people should not drive impaired is to tell the truth about Maggie's life.

Can you imagine a life being restricted? The simplest incline means you are left out? The heaviest door means you cannot access a building or a place which is labelled accessible really and truly isn’t?

Think about the older houses out there with their tiny halls and doorways how does someone navigate through all of that?

I remember being at a large family function in a home which was a split level and after getting Maggie into the sunken living room the festivities started. It was a really great event and I can distinctly remember a lot of happiness. Then as it got later everyone seemed to drift off into the kitchen looking for more turkey to eat and Maggie was left all alone in the living room by herself.

I remember coming back and there was Maggie all there alone by herself and crying. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she was just crying because she was happy.

Years later after Maggie had passed through distant cousins I would re-tell that story from my childhood and they would tell me the truth. Maggie suffered from depression her life ws really one of misery. She was crying not out of joy but because her life was one of being left out. It was yet another family secret downplayed and hidden in shame.

It was then I learnt the reality of Maggie’s life.

Can you imagine not being able to have a bowel movement naturally? Do you really want to know the truth that someone has to put on a glove and then insert a finger up your rectum to manually stimulate a bowel movement? They even have a term for it - it is called “giving a digital.”

How about if your bowels back up too much and you become so constipated your breath smells like fecal matter? It is not a joke but reality.

Or how about pressure sores developing because you are always sitting on the same spot in a wheelchair? Can you imagine what it must be like to never feel sores which can turn ulcerous to the point of where it might even expose a bone? Can you imagine that something as simple as sitting all of the time can kill you?

Pressure Sore From Immobility My Cousin Maggie Suffered From This At Times - source Facebook

Maybe they should print photos of that in a newspaper and see if that doesn't shock people into reality.

Or how about a depression so deep it never goes away? You have to hide it. For the rest of your life you think about that one mistake and what it cost you.

Or how about the depression getting so great you are in hospital having finally given up and they have a tube down one of your nostrils to feed you? Can you imagine the struggle to stay alive for your children when your inner self just gives up?

So you live a lie, as far as everyone knows you were born this way so people feel compassion for you. You fear they learn the truth of one youthful mistake and think of you as foolish and deserving a life of pain. Perhaps at the family level nothing is said but you fear people talking behind your back saying “how silly you were and how sorry they are.”

You fear the shame which for many might seem like a small mistake and a simple act of teenage rebellion but in the end you re-live every day for the remainder of your life.

Or what about if your child falls down even a couple of stairs and because you are wheelchair bound you can not reach and help her? How do you portray that helplessness so people get the message about the true cost of impaired driving? As a parent can you truthfully imagine what that feels like?

Or how about having to go to the hospital to have a catheter removed and later re-inserted so you could have sexual relations with your husband?

This is the reality my distant cousin Maggie lived in.

How do you simulate this for people to make them understand and quit the preventable foolishness of impaired driving?

Unfortunately in journalism we write obligatory stories about not drinking and driving. The kind which lists the stats, you know the hard numbers.

Numbers like in 2015 that 54 people lost their lives to impaired drivers and how in 2016 it rose to 57 according to SGI.

But do these numbers really make a difference? Isn't one life far too many for something so damn preventable?

Or year over year Saskatchewan has the highest rate of impaired drivers?

Or that the largest number of fatalities on Sasktchewan roads each year is still caused by impaired driving?

Are these facts ever going to change people's minds?  

In my opinion they are not going to change a thing but publishing them seems to give the media a sense of satisfaction knowing the facts are out there but in reality the very thing needed to stop is not being published.

The thing missing is reality.

I spoke to Tyler McMurchy, manager of media relations with SGI, a couple of years ago who agrees.

"The human cost is staggering every person has families and circles of people who cared about them," McMurchy said.

SGI even ran a series of 12 ads featuring families who had lost loved ones to impaired driving which were highly effective.

McMurchy speaks about the need for an attitude shift to understanding its a serious problem "and not something that's not a big deal."

Despite the blitzes - even publicizing they are out and about - the numbers arrested for impaired driving seemingly continues to remain stable and sorry to say even grows.

There has been changes to the federal law which in some ways do go overboard and are being corrected by the courts. But the basic premise of them that allows the police to pull over a vehicle without suspicion you are impaired thankfully in my opinion remain intact.

Despite tougher penalties impaired driving rates persist. Is it maybe time to get even tougher?

Or turn every car into an Uber cab?

I highly doubt any of those measures will deter everybody. And for many in the Moose Jaw taxi industry in the long run make it more difficult to earn a living further compounding the problem in off peak times when the ride sharing companies are unlikely to offer service in Moose Jaw but at least a few taxi companies do.

It is good publicity and PR for politicians but it really does not address the problem when it comes to the real problem.

And that is going to take some major type of attitude change and the realities of impaired driving need to be made not simple statistics spewed out by the media as an annual friendly reminder but rather there needs to be an attitude change.

So what's the solution?

I think back to my cousin Maggie and how impaired driving and one youthful mistake cost her so much.

Perhaps its time we start telling the true human cost of impaired driving, quit skirting the issue with political correctness. Perhaps it is finally time we simply tell the truth and the reality.

Maybe then we all might finally understand and cut this crap out.

As a note my distant cousin Maggie or Margaret has been gone now for about 20 years - life with a disbility also can mean a shorter life.