Neediest Cases: During a Time of Crisis, Retiree Gets some Help

By: Aaron Donovan
The New York Times, December 12, 2000

"I'm all cut up like a pig," he said. "They cut me up every which way."

The jagged scars are reminders of the half dozen operations he went through to help improve his circulation. The operations were supposed to save his legs, but they did not. His legs were amputated well above the knee five years ago. "I had bypasses and bypasses and bypasses," he said. "Nothing worked."

After the amputations, he was placed in a nursing home, because he needed assistance in the daily tasks of living, like showering and eating. He lived there for nine months.

"It was terrible," he said. "There were roaches running over you all day and night."

Eventually, he convinced some friends that he could live on his own, with the assistance of a home health aide, and they helped him find a place. He moved into a two-room apartment on the ninth floor of a Jamaica, Queens, housing project, largely bare except for a small television, a paper cross and portraits of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Green's grandson, Cornell, and his daughter, Dolores, who died 12 years ago of pneumonia at 29.

"I didn't know my life would be like this," Mr. Green said from his wheelchair. "I prayed and hoped for my retirement, but everything went down the drain."

His home health attendant, Lolita Munesser, goes to the store for him, cleans the apartment, wheels him to the doctor and does his laundry. She also makes sure that Mr. Green, who has prostate cancer, is feeling well and not in need of medical attention.

"Without her I'm lost," Mr. Green said.

The service costs $261 a month. Mr. Green gets $820 a month in Social Security payments and a pension of $62.64 a month, which he earned by working for 13 years at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But the home health provider, which charges according to a client's ability to pay, did not bill him for the first five months because it was studying his income and savings.

Mr. Green thought Medicaid, which pays for most of his other medical bills, had been paying for the service. When the bill for those five months came, it was $1,305.

"It was a shock to me," he said. "I thought, How can I get this kind of money?"

Mr. Green had also worked 13 years at a printing office and for 1 year as a mail handler. "I never had to ask anybody for help," he said. But when he got his bill, he had no other choice. He turned to the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, which paid the bill.

"People do get into trouble, they do need help at times," said Megan E. McLaughlin, executive director of the federation. "There are some of us who have no family or other sources to help. I'm very glad the federation has The New York Times Neediest to fill that gap."

For many years, the jobs that Mr. Green held required manual labor. "I had to do a lot of lifting and walking," he said. "I didn't have a sitting job."

It was when he was working at the printing office that he first noticed intense pain in his legs. "The veins started getting bigger," he said. "My legs started hurting, so I had to sit down." Mr. Green eventually had to quit his job at the printing office because of his leg problems.

Now, a man who used to stand for long stretches of time at work has gotten used to sitting in a wheelchair, and to the reaction people on the street have when they see him. "If you get like this, it's not easy for you," Mr. Green said. "When people walk by you they don't stop, because they think you're going to ask them for something."

Despite the fact that he is confined to his wheelchair, and does not leave his apartment without the help of his home health aide, Mr. Green said he was grateful to be alive — and living in his own apartment.

"Here, at least, I have a chance to move around," he said. "Sometimes I ride down to the elevator just to see some people, just to talk about what's on my mind, you know, to ease the pain."