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Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Patient desperately needs flight to Boston
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you have ideas on how to get Jack Stabinsky to Boston, contact Dick Deacon at 770-963-0216 or 770-862-4290.
He was 32 at the time, a fit foreman for a landscape construction company.
One day in 1985 while on the job, a tightness developed in Jack Stabinsky’s calves and legs. His mind told his appendages to move. They didn’t.
Now 53, his legs don’t work at all and he can’t control his bowels. He uses an electric scooter and wears a catheter. For the last year, he has lived in the Life Care Center of Gwinnett, a nursing home in Lawrenceville that offers palliative care.
He’s preparing for the day when his multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system, worsens. When that happens, he wants to be in the Boston Home, a century-old nursing home in Massachusetts that specializes in long-term care for adults with physical disabilities. Many of its patients have multiple sclerosis.
Stabinsky had been on a waiting list for one of the center’s 96 beds for several months. Good news arrived Friday. He’s in.
Now, there’s another challenge. Getting there.
He has to find a way to get to Boston from Lawrenceville with consideration given to his medical condition and tight budget. The last resort would be a 20-hour drive by medical van, something he ought not endure given his health.
“We’re looking at every option,” Stabinsky said. “Whatever it takes, we’re going to do it.”
The best mode of transport would be air travel, and that’s what Stabinsky’s friends, mainly Dick Deacon of the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation’s local chapter, are working to secure.
Deacon’s cellphone rang Monday while we were en route to visit Stabinsky. Someone was calling with details about a “mercy flight.” Deacon pulled to the side of the road.
“Twelve thousand dollars — that’s out of the question,” Deacon told the caller.
He and others have been calling corporations and nonprofits in hopes of landing a jet and pilot to fly Stabinsky. They’ve been checking with commercial airlines about ticket prices and accommodations. Deacon, who’s been slowed by multiple sclerosis to the point that he uses a walker, hopes someone will read this column and contact him with ideas, resources, help.
“It’s a miracle and answer to our prayers that Jack got in,” he told me. “Right now, we have to get him there.”
Time is of the essence.
The Boston Home, founded in 1881, can’t hold a bed. Demand’s too high.
“We can’t hold a bed for him for a month,” said Norma Harrington of admissions. “But we have given Mr. Stabinsky some wiggle room.”
That ends Monday.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@ajc.com.
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