JEAN GRISWOLD
People With MS and the Courage to Give
Chapter 10: Mike Your Life Count
FOR YEARS I WAS PLAGUED with strange symptoms—numbness, acute pain, loss of balance, and lots of falls. These were finally diagnosed as MS. I’ll never forget how surprised I was when dear old Dr. McClenahan, our family physician, came to our door, little black medical bag in hand, and said, “Sit down.” Instead of his stethoscope, out of his bag he pulled an orchid. It was his way of trying to soften the news that I had multiple sclerosis. He added, “Now, don’t go to the library and look it up.” But, of course I did. I realized I’d received a life sentence, but I wasn’t about to let MS hold me back.
For thirty-seven years I’ve struggled with the increasingly frustrating ravages of this disease. For the last ten years I have been unable to walk or to even stand. I can’t even get from my bed to my wheelchair without a Hoyer lift. Yet I still go to work every day because I have a dream and am still living it. My work of providing care to the homebound has helped 60,000 people. What could be better than that?
My high school yearbook said: “She’ll take the world by storm with her stirring speeches on business reform!” I guess my dream showed even then. As early as ten, picking apples from the tree in our backyard and selling them on the street corner, I knew I wanted to have my own business. In college I studied business law and labor relations and later earned my masters in personnel and guidance. But as interested as I was in business, when I married a minister I discovered there was a lot more to life. I knew then and there that I wanted to help people.
By the time my youngest son left home for college, fourteen years after my diagnosis, I was really beginning to confront my physical limitations, but I wasn’t about to let MS hold me back. I decided I wanted to get back into business. I applied for a position with a company handling placements and gave as a personal reference my best friend, Jane, who told them, “She does very well for someone with multiple sclerosis.”
You could practically hear the door slam in my face. I wasn’t even in the running. As Forbes magazine later wrote about this turning point in my life, “She couldn’t get a job, so she created one.”
As I thought about what I might do to help people, I immediately thought of a close friend—a member of my husband’s former congregation—who had died tragically from lack of care. I knew I couldn’t let this kind of thing go on without trying to help. I figured everybody who’s ill, disabled, elderly, or infirm needs someone, if only to do the little things like picking up a pair of glasses that have dropped to the floor just out of reach. Or to change a burned-out light bulb so they are not left in the dark. The kind of services that allow people to stay safely in their own homes, rather than being relegated to nursing homes.
So I decided to start a business to provide such a service, a business that would bring together my two longtime dreams—of being of service and an entrepreneur. I began recruiting seminary students and other caring people who could
go into people’s homes to provide the kind of help our elderly friend had been seeking.
If we were going to succeed, I knew I’d have to give it my undivided attention. To start and grow any business takes a lot of work and sacrifice, especially when you do it with almost no money. I gave up practically everything. Vacations were definitely out. I neglected family, friends, hobbies. I even gave up sleep for brainstorming and wee-small-hours conferences. Business became a part of every meal, every family gathering, and every waking hour. It took over my life, then my husband’s life, then my son’s, and now my daughter-in-law’s, too.
And it all started at my dining room table. From there it took over the living room, and then we enclosed the porch. As more and more people came to us for help, we kept adding phones and desks and people. Thus began what is now known as Griswold Special Care, the largest privately owned nonmedical home care company in America, with seventy-five offices in sixteen states, and operations in Mexico and South Korea. Despite being confined to a wheelchair because I cannot walk or even stand, I continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of the company. Griswold Special Care has become my arms and legs for reaching out with loving care to so many in need of help.
We’ve been at it for twenty years now and have helped more than 60,000 individuals and families. As my husband says, “You manage to do the impossible. It just takes you longer.”
The financial health of the company has allowed me to establish the Special Care Foundation, which provides home care for those who cannot afford it, and to provide a grant to establish the Griswold Special Care Wellness and Education Center in Philadelphia, which is run by the National MS Society Greater Delaware Valley Chapter. The center provides a host of programs, including exercise and education classes to help enhance the lives of people with MS, such as yoga,
nutrition classes, tai chi, balance, coordination, and strengthening exercises. When I hear remarks like, “Wellness has come to have a whole new meaning for me—physically, emotionally, and spiritually, these programs have altered my overall sense of myself,” it makes all my hard work worthwhile.
I have received many awards and been featured on national television and in magazines, all of which has been very satisfying, but the real reward is in knowing that Griswold Special Care has been such a blessing to so many.
I dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur and of helping others. Having MS did not stop me. For those of you who have MS, or any other limitation, I offer this challenge:
Don’t focus on what you have lost (or may lose).
Focus instead on your abilities and possibilities.
Make the most of what you still have and can do.
When you become discouraged and are tempted to give up, what you need is not something to make your life easier but something that will give your life purpose.
And finally, find someone or something to love. It is in giving that you receive. No matter what adversity or handicap may come your way, if you have love, there will always be new and creative ways to make your life count.
Jean Griswold can be reached through her Website: www.home-care.net/ index.html
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