Bear with me.
Helper Boy and I went out to do some spot cleaning at a job today.
Helper Boy cleaned the home two weeks ago while I was away. He was aware that the man of the home had Parkinson's disease but did not see the man there on his visit.
The wife sets up the job for today to have us clean up an area where his catheter bag leaked in her word's "two quarts" of urine out over night, plus a few other new spots. She would not be home but hubby would let us in.
OK.
Long, windy drive out there, my first time there. I thought we would just charge the minimum but after I suffered through the drive up, over and around the mountain I was dead set on hitting them up for $200.
Still with me?
It gets better.
We knock on the door and can hear some real strange noise from behind the door..
Imagine a in heat Tom Cat stuck in a set of bag pipes.
We think we hear "Come In" somewhere jumbled in the mumbling so we do.
Here behind the door we find a mid 50's man who is obviously having a hard time standing up, his pants are half down, a tracheotomy tube is in throat, he has awkwardly curved limbs and hands but a look in his eyes that despite his physical state he mind is all there. He knows who we are and tries to communicate with us despite all the strange noises coming from his trache tube.
I remain calm and ask him to show us the areas to be cleaned. He got himself up stairs amazingly enough to show us the urine spill. When I commented that I could not smell the piss at all he replied "Good news" with a smile on his face.
After that he left us alone to clean up.
Now it gets good.
Career highlight type of good.
While helper boy is packing up I try to start a conversation with the guy. 80% of what he says is indiscernible. At one point he gets so excited that he accidentally pulls out his tracheotomy tube from the hole in his throat.
His AND my eyes go wide as he tries to get the message across that I need to come over and put the damn thing back in RIGHT NOW!
Here comes Florence Nightingale to the rescue.
Good lord but that was a act of courage that I'll never forget.
Gross.
After we both catch our breathes he wants to to tell me about a special van that his millionaire friends gave him to get around in. "It's so cool" was uttered half a dozen times.
He gets into his automated, hi tech wheel chair and signals for me to follow him outside to see the van.
Helper Boy at this point wants to see whats going on so we both follow him out. There is an outside switch on the van that for some reason wont open it up.The poor guy gets real frustrated and spits out a lot of gibberish but we get the point the he REALLY wants us to see how the ramps and special seat work. He motions that he is going inside to look for the key. We stay by the van and shake our heads in humor, sorrow and amazement at this guy's great attitude. Not a second later we hear a big crash bang boom coming from the other side of the
Vortex.
His super wheel chair is to darn fast and he lost control in a corner and crashed in to a bunch of pots and drift wood. The poor bastard is leaned over in the bushes covered in potting soil and fragments of Terra Cotta. Of course we run over and pull him up and get him back in his chair. He is laughing so you know me, I loose it too.
The 3 of us are practically crying when he yells "ACE, my wife is gonna kill me"!!
He begs me to put the pots back while he goes and gets the damn key to his damn van.
Helper Boy has to grab him by the horns to brush off all the soil and chunks of pots that are all over him before he drags it across the wet carpet..
So he goes inside to search for the key while we straighten up then not minute later we hear another Crash Bang Boom coming from inside the house.
Good lord we say to each other.
We run in and find him hanging over a wooden ledge pinned under his super chair, He was reaching for something and his chair tipped over forcing him into a shelving unit where there WAS a bunch of china and pottery displayed. Things are happening so fast now because he is panicking about what his wife is gonna do to him and we are real concerned for life. Next thing I know he flies down a few steps into the room where all the broken ceramics are and tries to pick them up. I tell him I'll handle it and the dislodged shelf. I ask him to go sit down and instead he trips on the steps and takes a header. he is now laying on the floor crying.
Talk about awkward.
We clean up the best we can and fix the shelf and you bet your ass he still wants us to see the damn van in action.
Turns out he was sitting on his fanny pack the whole time in the super chair. Well we all got a kick out of that. Before we go out side again he says" What the hell am I going to tell my wife?" ( when I say he "says" I mean he utters. mumbles or spouts out and we take five or more guesses as to what he is trying to get across) At this point I am no longer interested in making any money here but just getting the hell out of there and to the last job of the day. So I tell him "You know what bud, you tell you wife that our hoses knocked over your plants and china so there will be no charge, and hopefully get you off the hook.
He looks at me with tears in his eyes and says "damn, you guys are the best."
So...
We all go outside again to see this damn van and sure enough his key ain't in his fanny pack...
He motions he wants to go back inside to find the key but I tell him it's gonna have to wait until the next visit.
As we follow him back in he stops by the area where he wiped out and asks us to move a few pots and pieces of wood to try and camouflage the damage better. After a long painful conversation we come to understand that is not allowed to go out side and he is trying to hide his tracks. Seems last time he went out on his own he biffed it in the drive way and passed out. He got burns all over from the scorching hot asphalt. He asked us to get a broom and clean up a little better. No problem.
You could just tell that this was a great guy who you or I would have loved to been a pal with. He told us he built his house entirely by his self as well as ten other homes on the hill before the Parkinson's hit him.
I asked if the tube was related to the Parkinson's to which he replied "no, I had colic as a baby and back then they attempted to cure colic with radiation....."
Throat cancer.
What an experience.
On our way out asked how much we would have normally charged to come and clean the carpet. I told him about $150 and I think he started to cry again.
How's that for a Wadjadowednesday?
