by David McPherson

Well this trip to India didn’t quite go the way it was supposed to!

To set the scene, I am a 65-year-old para having been in the chair for 57 years since the age of 8. 

Over the years I have been very active having been to two Paralympics, snow skied most years, water skied, was a Private Pilot for 20 years, travelled extensively independently, in addition to holding down a demanding career for 40 years before retirement, and much more.

I suppose my downfall was that I probably still think I’m bulletproof and capable of anything. Sadly, I am starting to realise that age does catch up with all of us.

So why did I want to travel to the most populous (1.4 billion people) country on our planet with little in the way of facilities or infrastructure to accommodate a person in a wheelchair?

I am a member of Rotary International and was District Governor in the year 2022-23 for a district that covers about a third of Victoria and some parts of Southern NSW. Last year I learnt of an opportunity to travel to India to participate in the ‘Mega Polio Campaign’ – a large-scale vaccination effort designed to protect children from polio by administering the oral polio vaccine (OPV) to all children under a certain age. 

These campaigns are often implemented in areas where there is a risk of the virus spreading such as where we were in an area close to the border of Pakistan. Pakistan and Afghanistan have endemic polio cases which may be carried to neighbouring countries by travellers.

Rotary instigated the campaign in 1985 to eliminate polio from the world. At that time there were over a thousand cases every DAY, but today there are but a few cases worldwide per year. As such Rotary has put a lot of time money and effort into eliminating what will be only the second disease eliminated from the face of this earth, the first being Small pox.

I felt it important that I do what little I can to add to this mammoth effort. To get over that last hurdle.

Prior to my trip to India I made many enquires to both the travel company and the Rotary club hosting the campaign to ensure that there would be provided for me accessible transport and accommodation. This was assured to me, however their definition of ‘accessible’ obviously is different to ours!

The only way to access the bus which was used for the tour was to be ‘piggy-backed’ up the steps! The hotel accommodation initially did not have a ‘roll-in shower’ although towards the end of the tour it miraculously did. 

Some of the places we visited were not accessible, however that was only to be expected in what is a developing country.

We started off in New Delhi, where we stayed overnight in a rather nice hotel with a bathroom that was small but accessible (only just). We then boarded the bus to travel to Agra. This is where the Polio vaccinations were being undertaken, coordinated by the Agra Tajmahal Rotary Club.

Our team was split over 10 locations in the slums of Agra, and I estimate that all up we must have vaccinated nearly 1,000 children in that one, single day.

Of course no visit to Agra is complete without visiting the Taj Mahal, which we did as well as a number of other sites.

We then travelled to Ranthambore, where we stayed in an old Palace and visited the tiger reserve. Some of our group got to see a tiger, but they were very elusive for us.

On to Jaipur (City of Jewels – Amber fort, City Palace, etc) then back to Delhi with a visit to Ghandi’s cremation place and other sites. 

It was on Day 3 of our 14-Day tour that I suffered a significant injury. A lack of coordination by the people helping me up a couple of steps saw me catapulted out of my chair, hitting my head on the concrete floor and reputing the triceps tendon on my left arm.

Initial diagnosis was just bruising and inflammation however on return to Australia the true extent of the injury was revealed. This necessitated surgical repair and 3 months of no use of my left arm.

How did I continue with my trip after the injury on Day 3? Well, I was very fortunate to have travelled with a friend Katrina who was able to assist me in and out of bed as I wasn’t able to lift myself due to my injury. We also thought long and hard about continuing the trip or not.

In the end we decided it was either ‘Go Hard or Go Home’. We decided to ‘Go Hard’.

Even though it was hard (and painful at times) we made changes to make it a bit easier. Instead of being ‘piggy-backed’ into the bus we decided to hire a car and driver to get from place to place, even though I still needed to be lifted into the car.

After my return and the surgery, it was a real dilemma on how I was going to spend the three months needed for the repair to heal. I was not an ‘acute’ patient, I was not defined as a ‘rehabilitation’ patient and if I was admitted to an aged care facility I could only stay there for two weeks as a respite patient.

In the end, as I am under NDIS, I decided (with some advice) to put in place supports and equipment (power chair and hoist) at home. So that’s what I did and it has worked really well. My arm was in a brace for 8 of the 12 weeks so the support worker essentially had to shower and dress me as well as hoist me in and out of bed.

As I write this I am now at the point where I am back in my manual chair, although still being hoisted in and out of bed by the support workers who also assisting with dressing. Hopefully I will have regained enough strength soon to return to full independence.

I need to make mention of the Handi-Move hoist and gantry system that I use. I believe this is a much better system than a manually operated hoist. It fits over my queen size bed with space for the chair on the side and they do have a frame device that the operator can use independently. This is probably something I will look at for the future although with a permanently fixed track on the ceiling.