Robison Jewish Health Center
By Jenn Director Knudsen
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Originally from San Francisco, Judith Friedman spent years in the Bay Area as a vocation rehabilitation counselor helping people with disabilities get back to work.
In the early 1980s she even earned grant money for a project that would create lightweight objects so that people with certain disabilities could use them instead of heavier objects and thus remain in the workforce.
Living near the then-nascent Silicon Valley, Friedman tapped companies that once struggled but now are behemoths—such as Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard—to help develop items for workers with disabilities to lift and manipulate.
How ironic, then, when around age 40, Friedman began to lose the ability to grip things in her own hands.
"I dropped everything I held on to," said Friedman, now 68, in an interview at the Robison Jewish Health Center, where she's lived permanently for the past three years. "At first I attributed it to just plain clumsiness."
"I loved working; I was a workaholic," and so for years her diagnosis didn't keep her off the job, Friedman said.
Seems her spirit has changed little.
"She embodies self-direction and encourages fellow (Robison) residents to follow her example," said Kim Fuson Levy, RJHC administrator.
"Fellow residents and staff admire Judy's creativity, resourcefulness and spontaneity," Levy continued. "Even with the challenges Judy faces with MS, she is a testament to the power of positive thinking."
Nearly a decade after her diagnosis, Friedman's job was squeezed out in a company merger. That and the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which threatened her home in San Francisco's unstable Marina district, helped convince Friedman to move to Portland and join some family members up here.
By then, in 1997, she was in a manual wheelchair and moved for the first time into the RJHC.
Again at the cusp of something new, in 1998 Friedman moved across the street, into one of the first available apartments at the Rose Schnitzer Manor. The facility now has 161 apartments.
Both RSM and RJHC are overseen by Cedar Sinai Park, a comprehensive provider of care and housing for the elderly and infirm.
RJHC is an 88-bed nursing facility that also offers memory care and a 36-bed residential care unit. Currently, 100 people call Robison home, according to Levy.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland this fiscal year allocated nearly $373,000 toward this premium facility, according to Laurie Rogoway, JFGP's associate executive vice president and campaign director.
"The JFGP allocation to Robison helps to cover RJHC's annual $1 million shortfall from inadequate Medicaid reimbursement from Oregon," said Levy, adding, "JFGP's allocation is spent solely on resident care and quality of life."
Consistent with MS, Friedman's central nervous system continued to deteriorate and five years later, in 2003, she returned to RJHC and shares a well-lit room with another woman with MS.
"My ability to transfer (from wheelchair to standing and back again) became questionable," she said from one of three electric wheelchairs which she relies on today, one of which is decorated with a John Kerry 2004 bumper sticker and a long-stemmed silk sunflower she uses like a crossing guard.
"My (RSM) apartment was like a solarium; there was a forest in my room."
Friedman continued, "I think live things take the feeling of being sick away."
As does gussying yourself up, she said.
"Because you have a disability doesn't mean you don't want to look pretty. In fact, It's therapeutic to look pretty," Friedman said, smiling through perfectly outlined crimson lips.
Her eye makeup is meticulously appointed beneath wire-rimmed eyeglasses; her manicured nails shine with a coat of red; and her short, blond hair is coiffed in big, tight curls.
Friedman says she is happy at Robison and actually quite mobile; she takes Tri-Met to events and locales in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. "That's a lot of space" in which to maneuver, she said.
"I am blessed; I can't complain at all," Friedman said of her life. "It's not a tragedy that I have to use a wheelchair." And, she adds, Robison and its staff "make it possible for me to be independent" and afford her "a very active life," including participation in all Jewish holidays and events, she said.
Some things do require a little assistance.
Friedman can eat on her own and dress mostly on her own, she said, but a staff member helps her pencil in honey-brown eyebrows.
"I cannot put them on; try putting them on with glasses on!"
And another staff member has helped train a wildly growing philodendron beneath a skylight and against the wall adjacent to the bed in her room. A purple-hued wandering Jew falls in tendrils from its perch on a ceiling hook.
"The secret is keeping them in the light, and they will grow like mad," the green thumb says.
"I want to make it very clear this is a wonderful place."