Teen Learns To Let Others Be Crutches
Clear your sidewalks. There are people out there on crutches. Like Carrie Kent.
Carrie broke her ankle jogging on a sunny morning just before Christmas. It took a plate and pin to hold it together. No snowboarding, running or swimming for the 16-year-old athlete. Just lots of couch time.
“One second I was so normal, the next second I was an invalid,” she says, reluctantly acknowledging her vulnerability.
Few kids are more self-sufficient and independent than Carrie. She got her driver’s license the day she turned 15. She teaches piano and swimming, cooks and asks for nothing except cooperation from others.
“When I was stuck on the couch, I thought, `If I were like this all the time, I’d rather be dead,”’ she says, then quickly corrects herself. “I wouldn’t, of course.”
She wanted to do everything the way she always had, so she scorned help. The space between her chin and neck became useful for carrying. She balanced more than she thought possible. She stood paralyzed on her crutches on ice outside of school and finally inched in without help.
But she moved in slow motion in a world on warp speed. Finally, she asked for help.
“I always want to help other people,” she says, her hands gesturing wildly as if to compensate for her stationary foot. “I found out they want to help, too. It makes them feel good.”
She’s driving and swimming again, although the plastic cast stays on until late spring. And she smiles about the side of life the broken ankle has exposed to her.
“Perfect strangers feel A-OK calling me a gimp,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And you can’t realize how many people see me and say, `I broke this and this.’ I just nod. What am I supposed to say to that?”
Help!
Your teenage daughter eats nothing but bread and water. She appears healthy, but you can’t help feeling alarmed that she suffers from a deadly eating disorder. What do you do?
Start with questions. The Kootenai County Youth Task Force is bringing together all sorts of local resources for parents at a free seminar Thursday at Coeur d’Alene High. Experts will speak about parents’ rights, substance abuse, health problems, improving parent skills and the agencies and people out there to help you.
The seminar starts at 5:30 p.m. in the school’s auditorium. Go - you might learn something.
Transplant Dollars
I’ll stop writing about Rathdrum’s Don Haney and his need for a new liver as soon as he has enough money - $150,000 - to get on the transplant waiting list. His friends are chipping away at the staggering sum with raffles and auctions. The $150,000 is only a down payment. Don needs a total of $250,000 to get the job done.
So - how about $5 for a raffle ticket for Don? You could win a lawn tractor, hope chest, shopping spree, dinner or any number of other prizes. Tickets are on sale Friday and Saturday afternoons at the IGA in Rathdrum for the Feb. 11 drawing.
Signs of the Times
You can tell a lot about a place from its trash. The other night, I walked my dog, Sport, along Coeur d’Alene’s Sherman Avenue and he found something on the sidewalk he couldn’t live without: an empty espresso-to-go cup.
A few years ago, he most likely would have found an empty ice cream or frozen yogurt dish. Before that - discarded parking tickets?
What are some of the unmentioned (or unmentionable) signs of change in your town? Don’t hold back. Send your lists to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.