The first full day at Green Manor Nursing Home, at 8 AM a group of ten employees including the Director of Nursing, assorted registered nurses, aides and one African-American woman, came into my room. I could not get out of bed, so we introduced ourselves. They were there to meet one of their latest projects, me.

 Super Fly was a black television detective at the time, with a show of his own. Sheila, the black woman’s name, appeared to be a woman Super Fly. She stood at the edge of the crowd, attractive, arms akimbo, hair in an Afro, watching me. The group developed a plan of action; if they discussed it in front of me, which I doubt, I remember none of it.

The next morning Sheila came into my room right after breakfast, announcing my colon was completely blocked. We would clear it all out with the help of a super enema. “It would probably take us two sessions in as many days. People called her ‘the queen of enemas’ and “I am,” she said, “pretty gifted!”

Minutes later she was back wheeling a large black enema maker, and she said we would get to work. Time did not fly while she coached me to cooperate with the enema. I worked as hard as I ever worked in my life. With a good portion of the morning gone, Sheila announced that we had filled four bedpans and that tomorrow we would be complete in one more session.

Next day we finished, but compared to the first session it was small stuff. When we were done I had bonded with Sheila. I hugged her and kissed her and felt like I loved her. Though I was in the nursing home for two more months that feeling never left me. Every morning Sheila would start my day with her big smile, maybe talking about a solution to one of my medical problems as she breezed into my hospital type room.

Sheila taught me to dress myself, then to wash in the bathroom. Finally, when I could stand and sit again, it was time to go in the shower.

For years I had been diagnosed with exacerbating-remitting Multiple Sclerosis. What I had just gone through was both typical and atypical of chronic MS. Having lived for six years in our weekend home near Albany in upstate New York, care for myself and personal safety had become more difficult. I had purchased First Alert, advertised on television. You wore an alert necklace around your neck. If you fell you pressed a button, saying, “Help me. I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”

One morning I fell in the bathroom and pushed my button. Three people had agreed to be called in case of emergencies, and First Alert began with number one, my good friend Frank.

My constant companion, Standard Poodle Chloe, padded in from the front room, and sniffed my head and ears where I lay on the bathroom floor. I told her I had fallen and that I couldn’t get up. Chloe turned, trotting back from to the front bay window. She barked steadily and rhythmically until Frank arrived twenty minutes later. By the time he arrived, Chloe was hoarse but she had never stopped barking; it was a Lassie moment.

I was taken by ambulance to Albany Medical Center where my neurologist supervised a standard treatment with intravenous prednisone for six days. From there he sent me to Green Manor Nursing Home. Weeks later I had worked through some of my stunned feelings and found myself with Sheila learning how to shower.

Sheila sat me down, and said, “You are gonna take care of yourself; you are not gonna be a burden to anybody!” She knew what was a stake even if I didn’t, and she taught me how to do everything in a shower by myself. Thirteen years later, I am in an adult home where most people have shower assistance. I still don’t.

When I graduated from the Nursing Home, Sheila took me next door to adjoining Adult Assisted Living. I asked for her email address, and we exchanged information. Having done great work together, we were mutually bonded. That day, neither of us wanted to say goodbye.

Our correspondence dwindled. Sheila was a ‘doer’ and not a ‘talker’. Jim the van driver said months later that Sheila had left Green Manor. “She got sick of ‘it – all the crap’,” he said. As for me, I believe that during my time of distress, God had sent me a black angel named Sheila. She had led me back to life.