A double amputee in middle age, beset by a series of unfortunate events over the the last six years, was tonight expected to lay his head down in his home at Pipers Avenue, Lodge Hill, St Michael, overcome with joy and relief after the army staged a makeover.
Once a chauffeur and heavy-duty truck driver, Eutice Forde, lost his left leg in 2012 as he returned home, still in shock over the news of his brother’s death. He stepped on a nail and for the next six years would find himself in and out of the hospital. He would lose the leg.
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Barbados Defence Force chief of staff Glyne Grannum (right) hands over the keys to the renovated home to Eutice Forde while Major Lubin Maxwell (left) looks on.[/caption]
“The doctor stopped me from driving heavy duty vehicles but I still used to drive because you have to eat, you have to make a living,” Forde told reporters.
One injury led to another: a fractured right ankle left untreated cost him his
other leg.
“When I got out the car one morning, walking on the crutches and I slipped . . . and fractured my ankle. I went to the hospital and they never looked at me. Seven days I was going to the hospital . . . and all they telling me is come back tomorrow so it kept happening until when I had to take it off and that made my life more down,” said the father of one.
His therapist encouraged him to share his story back in 2017, but it was last
May when Forde’s plight reached the Barbados Defence Force’s Building Rehabilitation Projects Manager Major Lubin Maxwell.
Over the next two months, Major Maxwell, a professional quantity surveyor, led the renovation work on Forde’s two-bedroom timber home, as a Defence Force construction team built on a fully functional indoor bathroom fitted for a disabled user and provided functional disability access to the house.
Well-wishers and business owners were drafted into the task of donating materials and labour for the refurbishment.
At today’s ceremony to hand him the keys to his home, Forde said he never expected Major Maxwell to be his saving grace.
“I feel alive, happy, joyful, everything. I am a new man right now. I feel good. . . I am overwhelmed. I wasn’t looking for it to happen but it just happen. I give thanks to the Almighty and Mr Maxwell for making it happen,” Forde told the media.
Army chief of staff Colonel Glyne Grannum presented Forde with the keys to his new home.
The post Home makeover for double amputee appeared first on Barbados Today.
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