Hero's are from all Generations

The Path to Volunteerism
 Mike Buchanan, Vietnam veteran/hospice volunteer

            Volunteering is a commitment.  Michael (Mike) Buchanan’s route to volunteerism was a perilous path that took him from the jungles of Vietnam through the farms of Indiana, past the steel mills of Gary and giving his time to people he doesn’t know at the Hospice of the Calumet Area.
           Mike graduated from Horace Mann High School, Gary, with the Class of 1968.  He joined the U.S. Army in January 1969 and was assigned to Vietnam after training in the Army’s Corp of Engineers.  Based at Tay Ninh, 90 miles northwest of Saigon, and close to the Cambodian border, Mike was with the combat engineers.  Among his duties were to manually sweep the roads and trails for mines.  August of 1970, after having completed one of these sweeps, on the ride back to his base, they were ambushed.  Four rocket propelled grenades (RPG’s) slammed into the truck he was riding, followed by rifle and machine gun fire.  Mike would be hit with shrapnel and bullet wounds.  Four of the engineers with him were killed and five wounded; Mike among them.
              “The next five days I don’t remember much,” Mike recalled, “after the fifth day I was air lifted to Saigon, then to Japan.”  When his wounds were stabilized, he was transferred to Great Lakes Naval Hospital, North Chicago, Illinois, for rehabilitation.  Both legs were badly damaged, but the doctors tried everything possible not to amputate them.  He had already had half of his left hand amputated.  “I received good care,” Mike said, “but they weren’t gentle.
           “We were in a contamination orthopedic ward (due to the infections in their wounds, which were not common to the United States) and weren’t allowed to leave it.  “But, we would sneak out, just to see people and have somewhere to spend our money,” Mike stated with a smile.  “When they found out, an officer threatened us with an article 15 (a military court martial), but we thought, ‘what are they going to do to us, send us to Vietnam?”
            Discharged in January 1971, a year later his right leg was amputated, because of recurring, untreatable infection.  At the same time he lost the use of his left leg.  “Due to nerve and muscle damage (to the left leg) I can push my foot down, but I can’t lift it back up,” Mike explained, “I now wear a brace to compensate for it.”  The added wear and tear on that leg, eventually caused Mike to have his knee replaced; a procedure he faces again in the future.  To this day he receives treatments for those wounds and suffers pain in them.
           Mike restarted his life in 1972, attending Purdue University, Calumet.  It was there that he met the love of his life and his inspiration to keep going when everything is at its worst, Becky Blythe from Hammond, Indiana.  “She is a gem, that I don’t know what I’d do without,” Mike stated.  They married and Becky went to work as a Registered Nurse at St. Margaret Hospital in Hammond.  Mike, also trained as a nurse, quickly realized that he wasn’t cut out for that profession, and returned to Purdue (Lafayette) where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture.  He worked for several years helping farmers with their crops and the ecology of their land usage, but all the walking through fields proved too difficult with two severely damaged legs.
            Mike went back to Purdue to learn computer analysis and programming, then worked for several of Gary’s steel mills.  In 2002, his only daughter, Meghan, was away at college, and his wife, Becky, now an attorney with her own practice, Mike decided he could take it easy and entered semi-retirement, sparked by chronic pain.  In keeping with his love of conservation, he first began volunteering at the Brookfield Zoo, exposing children to recycling, ecology and to respect plants and animals; a labor of love that he continues to this day.
           Mike’s mother-in-law, Dorothy Blythe, was placed in hospice care at the Riley House, run by Hospice of the Calumet Area.  “The care she was given by the caregivers at Hospice of the Calumet Area was so wonderful that my wife said, ‘you are looking for somewhere else to volunteer, this would be perfect,” Mike said.  She was right and he started volunteering for them in 2003.
            Mike is one of those anonymous volunteers whose work isn’t seen, but is so important to the patients and their families.  He works in the office, where he gathers the supplies that the caregivers will need on a case, fills out the records and builds new charts, so that the caregivers will have the packets ready to take with them, this allows the caregivers more hands on time with the patients.
           “Since starting there I’ve gotten to know all the nurses and other caregivers.  They are a great bunch of people who have a genuine concern for the patient and their family.  It takes a unique type of person to enter a profession where you know that your patient is going to die.”  This, of course, is true of all those who work in Hospice Care.
           It also takes a special type of person to volunteer their time to lessen the load of professional caregivers.  Hospice is one of those areas of care that only works because of those who make the commitment to volunteer.  Without these special volunteers the cost of hospice would be overwhelming.  Yet, the service provided by hospice can not be gauged on a financial level, rather a spiritual one.  It is the spirit that is lifted to both the patient and his loved ones; however, if it isn’t affordable it is useless.  This is why volunteers are so important.
           Mike has overcome a great many physical problems, throughout his life, yet his true character shines above the din of commonality.  He is a man who cares about others and is willing to give of himself so others may have a better life, in spite of any physical limitations.  Mike Buchanan brings that spiritual level of hospice to a higher plateau.