For nearly a decade, Charlotte Wood, 66, languished in a nursing home, feeling trapped by her health problems. A motorized wheelchair and a home by the sea have given her more freedom.
Much in the last decade of Charlotte Wood’s life has left her feeling trapped.
Depression swirled as she underwent heart surgery, lost her home during an extended nursing home stay and turned to junk food for comfort.
“I wound up staying in the nursing home 10 miserable, unhappy years,” Ms. Wood, 66, said recently. “I felt I was locked up. And I committed no crime other than getting ill.”
Ms. Wood said that long, sedentary convalescence made her feel like a prisoner in her own body. That feeling lingers as she continues to use a wheelchair.
In 2004, Ms. Wood was told she had congestive heart failure. Doctors advised her to enter a rehabilitation center to build up her strength before heart surgery.
She moved into a center in late 2005 and had the surgery a few months later. Because of complications, her recuperation took much longer than anticipated. In financial straits, she lost her apartment in Harlem and became a permanent resident of the rehabilitation center.
During those years, she developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and battled incessant depression. Ms. Wood said she had nothing to do besides eat, sleep and languish.
“For lack of a better word, I’m obese,” Ms. Wood said. “At the nursing home all those years, me and the vending machine became one.”
In 2014, Ms. Wood finally made a change. A social worker helped her secure an apartment in Far Rockaway, Queens, that looks out over the bay. The ocean air, she said, has done wonders for her respiratory illness.
The move is like a rebirth, Ms. Wood said, and has inspired a new attitude.
“I know I’m heavy,” Ms. Wood said. “I’m working on doing something about it. Notice I never said the word ‘try.’ I’m eliminating that word out of my vocabulary. I’m going to do this time.”
A major drawback of the new home, though, is the distance from her family.
“My children are hours away from me by subway and more hours by bus,” Ms. Wood said. “So when I’m in trouble, I’m on my own.”
A home health aide is at Ms. Wood’s side 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Ms. Wood is working hard to improve her mood and her autonomy, but mobility remains a challenge. For a long time, she relied on a manual wheelchair to get around, but it was very taxing on her body.
In 2016, Ms. Wood bought a motorized wheelchair, which she frequently used to leave her room and venture to the back yard of her apartment complex, overlooking the water.
But late last year, the wheelchair’s battery failed. Ms. Wood lost the ability to move freely, and her emotions began to spiral down. Her concerns for her health gave way to mortal fear.
“I’m a senior citizen, but I’m not ready to meet the Creator just yet,” she said.
Ms. Wood, whose monthly income is made up of $733 in Supplemental Security Income and $194 in food stamps, did not have the money to cover the cost of the repair. Her children were also unable to help.
“Everyone’s working, but today when you’re working, you work for no luxuries,” Ms. Wood said. “You just work to meet the needs of your family, your immediate family.”
After Ms. Wood overheard another resident of her apartment complex talking about Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, she contacted the agency and was given $566 from the fund to repair the wheelchair.
“Since I got the chair, I had an independence that I hadn’t had since I was off my feet,” Ms. Wood said.
Over the summer, she regularly made trips to nearby grocery stores and went to the boardwalk, mingling with the many people she encountered.
“In all honesty, I feel physically better, mentally better,” Ms. Wood said. “I just want to be here so I can be here for my family and enjoy much more of this life and not sit here and be rotting away.”
Her will to thrive has been reinvigorated, aided by a reasonable amount of fear about ever returning to a nursing home.
“If anything happens,” she said, “I’m just going to have to put on my boxing gloves and my kneepads and pray to the Creator that I have enough strength to keep on fighting to make it better.”
