|
Wanted: Family Room
Money sought to give Palo Alto VA
Hospital Visitors a Place to Stay
by Nicole C. Wong
Mercury News Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Army Spec. Erik
Castillo lies stiffly in a bed at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in
Palo Alto, after an exploding mortar shell in Iraq left him blind and
deaf on one side, partially paralyzed on the other, and missing almost
half his skull.
His mother, Maria Castillo, has already
used up all her vacation and a week of family medical leave to visit her
21-year-old son in distant hospitals.
He is more than 7,000 miles from the war
zone, but still 800 miles from home. Just getting to his bedside is
costly enough, but finding a place to stay in an unfamiliar city adds
another level of stress and expense for relatives struggling to be
closer to their recovering soldiers./p>
Stories like Castillo's are why nurses in
Palo Alto are disregarding rules about overnight guests and dialing up
their friends and relatives in search of spare bedrooms. They're also
digging into their own pockets in hopes of building a place to stay for
patients' families across the street from the hospital's rehabilitation
wing.
Home away from home
The goal is to raise more than $1.5
million to build the Bay Area's first Fisher House, a growing concept at
veterans hospitals that provides a home away from home for family
members who desperately need to be there for loved ones who are
relearning to walk and talk and reclaiming their lives.p>
"They can provide support in ways that we
can't,'' said Karen Blair, a nurse in Palo Alto VA's spinal cord injury
center who wrote a $5,000 check for the Fisher House fund. "They know
what to say and how to say it to give our patients the kind of positive
reinforcement that we can give as professionals, but it means a
different thing when it comes from the family members.''/p>
Named after real estate developer and
philanthropist Zachary Fisher, the residences are modeled after Ronald
McDonald Houses, which aid families with seriously ill children who are
being treated at nearby hospitals. The military started opening comfort
homes in 1991 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md./p>
Since then, Fisher Houses have spread to
all 17 major military medical centers and seven VA hospitals. The VA
can't spend government money on non-veterans, so the houses are built
through donations and matching grants from the Fisher Foundation./p>
Blair's donation was her way of carrying
on the spirit of her charity-minded parents, who recently passed away
and left her an inheritance. Hers was the first check for the
fundraising effort in Palo Alto, but not the first time a VA nurse has
drawn upon personal resources to help a patient's family find a room./p>
Jennifer Gebauer Gaoteote, a nurse in the
spinal cord injury unit, called her in-laws two years ago when a
patient's wife and caretaker from American Samoa needed a place to stay.
The patient's wife spoke Samoan and had
only left the island to visit other islands. ``She didn't know how to
get around, how to catch a taxi,'' Gaoteote said. ``It was very foreign
to her. She was very scared.''
Home-cooked meals
The pair spent a weekend with oteote's
in-laws, who are also Samoan. They slept in a spare bedroom in the
family's Fremont home, enjoyed home-cooked palusami -- a favorite island
dish of taro leaves baked in coconut milk -- and were driven over the
Dumbarton Bridge twice a day by Gaoteote's father-in-law.
Thanks to the generosity of a donor, Maria
Castillo and her 13-year-old son, Israel, stayed for free at the
Stanford Terrace Inn last week while visiting Erik..
"I'm not bringing any income into the
house at this point,'' said Maria Castillo, a single mother and airlines
reservations clerk from Arizona. "And the costs of the flights,
transportation, meals, hotels . . . .''
Last week's was their fourth trip from Rio
Rico, Ariz., to reassure the young man, who enlisted in the Army right
after high school to pay for college, during his physical therapy,
speech therapy and neuropsychology sessions.
Israel rated it as one of the better trips
because the hotel provided a courtesy shuttle to the VA hospital. During
their last trip, the pair were stranded at the hospital for hours one
night during the rainy Thanksgiving weekend as the taxi they called
drove around lost in the dark, unable to find the hospital.p>
Castillo is one of about 300 casualties
from Iraq who have been sent to Palo Alto's veterans hospital, the only
one in the western half of the United States that specializes in
traumatic brain injuries. Patients come from as far as Texas and Korea.
Of the 158 VA medical centers across the country, Palo Alto is one of
the five most heavily affected by the war./p>
It's also one of the toughest for
out-of-town families to visit. The long road to rehabilitation, coupled
with the area's pricey hotels and the occasional lack of available rooms
whenever Stanford hosts a big event, proves to be a big problem for
families./p>
The Fisher House is expected to open in a
year, at the earliest, on an acre adjacent to the Palo Alto medical
complex. The VA envisions it will accommodate up to 15 families, who
usually visit for a week or two at a time, in private bedrooms and
bathrooms. The visitors will be able to use the communal kitchen, dining
room, laundry room and living room stocked with toys and DVDs./p>
In addition to free housing, Fisher Houses
offer a haven where family members can retreat to in the middle of the
day when they need a place to cry.
Stressful visit
That's what Tonia rgent needed in
October while she tried to rally her husband, Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt.
Kenneth W. Sargent, during his monthlong rehabilitation. His road to
recovery from a booby trap that shot shrapnel through his head has been
riddled with post-traumatic amnesia, meningitis and other complications.
"It was very stressful,'' said the
35-year-old woman who calls Camp Pendleton home. "There was no place . .
. for me to have my bottoming-out period, to just really cry and let
go.''/p>
When argent found out the Palo Alto VA
hospital had been selected as a Fisher House site but had yet to raise
any money, she decided to kick-start the campaign.
She called dozens of U.S. senators and met
with local mothers whose children have served in the military./p>
"I need to volunteer to make things better
for the next family,'' she said. "A lot of people want to donate to
troops overseas. There are troops in the back yard for whom they could
make a difference.''p> |
