PIQUA — Oftentimes, it’s the little things that can be insurmountable challenges to a person confined to a wheelchair.
Take for instance the joy of soaking in a bathtub. For Connie Buller that was a long and tedious three-step process requiring transfers to various-sized stools and chairs.
“The days I got into the tub I didn’t plan anything else. It wore me out. Getting out of the tub was as hard as getting in. Once back in my chair, I didn’t feels as though I had taken a bath because I was all sweaty and tired,” she said.
Life became a whole lot easier for Buller in June when her son, Shane Schauf, purchased her a bathtub designed for the handicapped.
“With my new bathtub all I have to do is park my chair and slide right into the tub,” she said. “I have had more baths in the last couple of months than I have had in years.”
BULLER HAS met all her life challenges head on.
Born in 1947, Buller contracted polio when she was 10 months old. Her early years were spent in and out of hospitals. Her legs were supported with braces and crutches. When she was 13 she was confined to a wheelchair.
Not one to back away from a challenge, she set her mind on a teaching career and in 1973 rolled into her first classroom.
Buller taught in Yates Center, Oberlin, Neosho County Community College, for the ANW Special Education Cooperative and at Lincoln Elementary School.
“I never had any problems with my students. I may have been small, but my authoritative voice let them know that I was in charge of the classroom,” she said.
Her one problem came with members of a board of education in western Kansas that made her go into the bathroom so they could see if she could fit into the toilet stall.
“I was so humiliated, but I ‘stood my ground’ and proved to the school board I could manage,” she said.
She retired from teaching in 2007.
IN 1972, her father custom-built a home for her in Piqua. The kitchen cabinets are low to the ground, her washer is a front loading machine and her stove has controls on the front just above the oven door instead of on the back panel behind the burners.
This summer Buller also planted a vegetable garden in containers, which she could tend from her wheelchair.
“I wanted others who have mobility disabilities to know about the bathtub. It is a little on the pricey side, but I figure if it keeps me out of a nursing home in a few years down the road it is more than worth its cost,” Buller said.
