"It's hard enough for them, because they are already dealing with so many issues," Dugger said.
So Dugger, a Physical Therapist at the Shepherd Center, a catastrophic care center in Atlanta, paired with her co-worker, Suwannee resident Minna Hong, to do something about it. Now people might stare for a different reason, which might include just a tiny bit of envy.
Enter the "Rock `n Roll Express", a rig that looks like a rock band's tour bus. Flames lick around the sides of the jet black ride, inside there's a sound system with a sub-woofer so big it could make an arena vibrate. A disco ball scatters light around the interior, that is when the flat-screen TV isn't engaged with a Play Station game. Dugger tried to get spinners for the wheels, but they don't make them that big, so she had to settle for chrome. Notably, there are almost no seats. This bus has been converted to handle 12 kids in wheelchairs or on ventilators, kids who are patients of Shepherd.
Dugger works with kids who have become paraplegics, quadriplegics, or who have suffered some catastrophic injury that has limited their ability to walk or move. The accidents that have put them in her care have ranged from the typical to the unusual—wreck, football, trampoline, gunshot. A typical stay at Shepherd is six weeks. During those weeks of treatment and Rehabilitation, staff takes the kids on outings to have fun, but also to remind them that though their bodies have changed, the world they left has not, and they will have to re-enter it with new tools. But those field trips also give the kids a taste of how the world will react to their new form. And few other experiences point this up more starkly than arriving at a public place in a special van, or as Hong put it, "the short bus."
Hong uses a wheelchair to get around after being injured in a car accident years ago. As an adult the stares are hard enough, but for teenagers the glances can be doubly hard, she said.
"You know you are going to get the attention anyway when you pull up in the short bus, so, knowing that, what do you do?" said Hong, a peer counselor and marketing manager. "How do you make it work in your favor?"
You get a bus with a double take. At least that's what Dugger's goal was for her clients when she set out four years ago to make it happen. She was able to get an old school bus without air conditioning donated and hoped to make it into something worthy. She spent the first two years trying to earn a slot on the MTV hit, "Pimp My Ride" As time dragged on and nothing was happening, she made her pitch to Steve Rayman, owner of Rayman car dealerships. Rayman told her to scrap the school bus. He donated an old city bus bought online from California, Dugger said. Then in March, R&R Mobility and Lifts went to work making the interior suitable.
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COOL RIDE, CONT'D
Artists donated their time to paint the interior and put a wrap on the exterior, which makes the van look like it's covered in fire. The sound system was donated, as was the television. Dugger and Hong are still looking for a few more donations to make the bus just a little more plush.
Even so, the van is ready enough that it will take a maiden voyage in the next couple of weeks.
Kelsey Harbert, 17, hopes she'll be among the chosen few. Harbert was injured in a diving accident several weeks ago and her spinal cord was nearly severed. Her recovery is going well and she's expected to regain the use of her legs. But she wants to go on a ride on the bus before she leaves the hospital in early December. She and some of the other kids were given a tour of the bus recently just before it was ready. Harbert was the most impressed with the `super sweet system.'. "Oh my God, it's awesome!" Harbert said. "You turn it up and your head starts thumping! It doesn't feel like you're in the hospital, it's like you're in this hip-hop club!" Which is exactly the reaction Dugger and Hong were hoping for. "The hope is that it makes their heart a little bit lighter and ease the pressure of being different," Hong said. "So when they pull up to the mall with the system thumping, it'll be like, "Who cares if we're in a chair, we're still cool."
