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Waiting for wheels
Foundation aims to assist with wheelchairs, support
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by REID SILVERMAN
Kathleen Norris of California, Md., and her husband, Kevin Norris, far right, visit with Bryant Dent at Chesapeake Shores nursing home on Friday.
Kathleen Norris of California, Md., and her husband, Kevin Norris, far right, visit with Bryant Dent at Chesapeake Shores nursing home on Friday.
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Kathleen Norris of California, Md., just happened to glance into his room at Chesapeake Shores nursing home on Great Mills Road, she said.
It was January 2009, and Kathleen was making one of her regular visits to the facility in Lexington Park. For about a dozen years, she and her husband, Kevin Norris, had hosted church services at Chesapeake Shores and Kathleen had gotten into the habit of visiting with some of the less-mobile residents in their rooms after the service. The Norrises are associated with Cornerstone Baptist Church in Owings and, as part of a lay ministry with the church, have held services at Chesapeake Shores.
"I don't know why … I just looked in the door," Norris said of her initial meeting with Bryant Dent. "I saw him lift his head and look at me.
"I've been here ever since."
"She's become like a mother to me," Dent said as he and the Norrises were talking together last Friday.
A bulletin board next to Dent's bed at Chesapeake Shores attests to this relationship. There are photos of Dent's mother and grandmother, both now deceased, who took care of him in their Mechanicsville home after he was released from the hospital and rehabilitation center years after the Nov. 19, 1991, accident that so drastically changed his life. Dent came to live at Chesapeake Shores in April 2007.
But also on Dent's bulletin board, there are photos of people who work at Chesapeake Shores and numerous photos of the Norrises and their children and extended family. It's hard to see where one family leaves off and the other starts.
These days, Kathleen is at Chesapeake Shores four to five hours a day with Dent. Kevin comes in two to three times a week in the evenings. "They just developed a special bond," said Jaime Reppel, unit manager at Chesapeake Shores. "They're in here daily."
Dent smiles and agrees that he's been adopted by a nice family.
"Yeah, thank God," he said.
The relationship has become more than a comfort and help to Dent. Together, the Norrises and Dent recently formed a nonprofit organization, The Bryant Dent Foundation, that they hope will aid quadriplegics and paraplegics in Southern Maryland with specialized equipment that Medicaid and Medicare don't cover, and with a support and educational network. These are all things that would have benefitted Dent over the past 18 years.
Before his accident, Dent was an easy-going, social teenager. "I talked to everybody," he said. "Tried to make everybody laugh." Tall (he's 6'6") and athletic, he played basketball, first at Great Mills High School and then at Chopticon High School. He graduated in 1990 and continued with a string of jobs that he said came to him easily — Burger King, Hill's Club, McDonald's, IGA, Waldorf Toyota.
On the evening of Nov. 19, 1991, he was driving with three of his friends in a blue Mustang on Mechanicsville-Chaptico Road. The road was wet. He doesn't remember much about what happened, he said.
"I just know I hit a tree. I just wasn't paying attention, I guess," he said.
The tree fell on Dent. He suffered head and spinal injuries, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Dent was flown out by helicopter to the shock trauma center at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Later, he was moved to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C. He spent 2 years in the hospital.
When he was released, his mother took him home to Mechanicsville. "When I came home, it was just my mother," Dent said. Later his grandparents moved to Mechanicsville and helped. But there was no specialized care, no specialized equipment. Medicaid and Medicare cover Dent's basic medical expenses, but don't pay for a wheelchair designed for quadriplegics that Dent would need to be at all independent, Kevin said.
"Watched TV. Listened to music. That's about it," Dent said of the dozen years at home.
His friends largely moved on in their lives during his years in the hospital. "I haven't seen a lot of people I know," Dent said. "I guess I just got isolated … I just got used to it."
Dent's grandmother died in 2005, his mother in 2007. And he was left with no one. He was moved to Chesapeake Shores.
"After 18 years of lying in a bed, Bryant has suffered from muscle atrophy and has just recently begun physical therapy," Kevin said in an e-mail seeking sponsorship for an upcoming benefit. "He attends physical therapy one to two days a week … [accompanied by Kathleen] in Hollywood … and is slowly starting to straighten his limbs and sit semi-upright."
Oh, but to be able to move a little on his own.
Dent had a taste of this when he had a turn at a sip-and-puff wheelchair demo that he could operate with his breathing (blowing out to start, sucking in for brakes) and direct with just the turning of his head.
"It was real fun," Dent said. "I didn't want to get out of it."
But to own such a wheelchair seemed like an impossible dream. The cost would range from $25,000 to $28,000, Kevin said.
Actually, that price is a deal for the kind of specialized chair that Dent requires, said Paige Tamburo, an assisted technology professional/occupational therapist with Advanced Medical Concepts serving Southern Maryland. AMC specializes in customized equipment like a wheelchair for Dent. They can get expensive. "I've done chairs for as much as $45,000," Tamburo said Wednesday. "It's an expensive process."
The hope is that The Bryant Dent Foundation's first project will be to provide that wheelchair for Dent, "so I don't have to ask someone to move me over there," he said.
A hands-free computer and hands-free telephone could also be a help to Dent and others in similar situations.
But when Kathleen first brought up the idea of the nonprofit last spring, Dent had some definite ideas about its mission.
"I didn't want anything to do with the foundation unless it helped other people out," Dent said. "That's exactly what I was thinking about. If [other quadriplegics] had a chair, anything to help, I know how they'd feel. They'd feel different."
"Independent," Kathleen added.
Tamburo noted that there's a real need for what the foundation is aiming to provide. "I know a lot of clients in [Dent's] shoes," she said. "And there's no help for them."
In addition to assisting with wheelchairs and other equipment, the foundation's organizers hope to also add an educational/support aspect to the nonprofit, to help quadriplegics and paraplegics and their caregivers know what assistance is available for them.
The foundation's first event will be a banquet with a silent auction and dinner theater on March 20. Dent and the Norrises hope it will become an annual fundraiser.
"It's amazing," Dent said of the initial response to the event. "It just makes you happy to know people care about that."
If you go
The first Bryant Dent Foundation Banquet will be held March 20 at the Hollywood Volunteer Fire Department social hall. There will be a silent auction starting at 3 p.m. and a comedy dinner theater starting at 6:30 p.m.
The Bryant Dent Foundation is a nonprofit corporation formed for the purpose of aiding quadriplegics and paraplegics in the Southern Maryland area.
Tickets are $45 for both adults and children. Organizers are requesting that children younger than 10 do not attend. For planning purposes, organizers are asking the tickets be purchased by March 14. For tickets or more information, call 240-538-6017 or 301-659-5330; e-mail thebryantdentfoundation@verizon.net or purchase online at www.thebryantdentfoundation.com. Tickets are also available at Wood's Produce in Charlotte Hall.
