‘They need a lot of help’: How Shepherd gave new hope to couple struggling with blindness and illiteracy

January 17, 2025

The call for help on behalf of an older husband and wife in need came from the Greenwood Fire Department.

It wasn’t in Shepherd Community Center’s target area for assisting neighbors. And it wasn’t even in Marion County.

But Shane Hardwick, a member of Shepherd’s Shalom Project team and a lieutenant of special operations with Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services, knew that Shepherd could help.

Greenwood firefighters had been called to a dialysis center in Johnson County to assist the couple. What they found is a prime example of how poverty can lead to one disaster after another. But also how compassionate, thoughtful intervention can make a life-changing difference.

At the dialysis center, the husband had encountered a seemingly insurmountable problem. A wheel on his wife’s wheelchair had broken, and he couldn’t lift her or the wheelchair into an old delivery van he had tried to convert into a wheelchair transport.

“We don’t know their whole situation, but we know they need a lot of help,” a Greenwood firefighter noted in the referral.

After receiving the referral, Hardwick visited the couple at their home on the southside of Indianapolis. He quickly saw the range and severity of the problems the man and woman faced.

The wife is blind, and her husband can’t read. The wife’s diabetes had gone uncontrolled for years, triggering the loss of her eyesight and the amputation of a leg.

Doorways in the couple’s small house were too narrow for the wheelchair to pass through. So, the wife was confined to the living room, where she slept on a makeshift hospital bed with her husband on a sofa next to her.

“The husband handed us a stack of papers. They were waiver applications for health insurance that he couldn’t read and didn’t know what to do with,” Hardwick said. “This was an example of poverty restricting people’s ability to advocate for themselves and navigate complicated systems. Standing in their tiny home, in a cramped living room with a couch and hospital bed in it, reading the instructions on the applications, I too felt overwhelmed.”

To find help for the couple, Hardwick contacted Amy Wallace, a social worker at Shepherd, who began working to ensure that the couple received the services they were eligible for.

After months of completing forms and following up with agencies, Wallace received good news shortly before Christmas.

“(The woman) has been approved for full Medicaid!” Wallace said. “Her care manager is working to get things going for her as soon as possible. She has gone from having no insurance and having limited access to food to now having Medicaid. And she will have Medicare by February. She also will have home-delivered meals and will have in-home health-care services as soon as they can get it going.”

The funding also paid to widen doorways in the couple’s home, modify their bathroom to accommodate the wife’s disabilities, ensure access to prescription medications, secure more reliable access to dialysis and provide a more suitable bed.

“There is still work to be done, but this family will be left far better off than how we found them,” Hardwick said. “It truly is an honor to be part of this program. Thank you again for this partnership and the continued support.”

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