Ronnie Eisenberg, who has multiple sclerosis, lived in an apartment on East 72nd Street in Manhattan that was an obstacle course. The arches to the living room and the door to the kitchen were too narrow for her wheelchair. Each time she took a shower, she had to be carried over the lip.
”The apartment was filled with lamps, antiques and tchotchkes,” said Eisenberg, who is 47 and also uses a walker. To make the apartment accessible, Eisenberg and husband Walter would have had to rebuild it. Instead, two years ago, they moved.
They decided on a place that would be designed specifically for Eisenberg`s comfort, one that even anticipated the day when she might be bedridden.
In the new apartment, whose renovation was completed early this year, every inch and detail, from the stenciled wood floor to the depth of the sofa seat, is designed to make Eisenberg as physically comfortable and active as possible.
”I was afraid it would be a hospital setting,” Eisenberg said. It is not.
Eisenberg hired three designers to renovate the two-bedroom apartment, which is done mostly in peach. Eleanor LaSota, who designed the Eisenbergs`
first apartment, was the interior designer. Todd Brickhouse, vice president of Hygeia Design Associates in Carle Place, N.Y., which designs and sells products for the disabled, worked with Rod V. Luccioni, Hygeia`s architect, on the bathroom design. Together they designed an apartment that is as gracious as it is accessible.
Making allowances
The hallway, which is 60 inches wide, first charmed Eisenberg. It is wide enough for her to turn around in her wheelchair, which is a little more than 30 inches wide.
Her wheelchair can easily pass from room to room; all doors are 36 inches wide, instead of the standard 32 inches, and the floors are wood, which makes moving easier.
But the floor of the living room is stenciled to give what LaSota calls
”the illusion of a warm, country-style rug.”
Seats on the sofa and the chairs are shallow, 20 inches deep instead of the standard 23 to 25 inches. In multiple sclerosis, Eisenberg said, ”the hip flexors, the muscles, lose strength; so I flop forward or backward when I sit.”
The shallower seats give her the support she needs to sit upright. The bottom of the sofa is recessed, so when she gets up from the sofa, she can push her heels against it for extra leverage.
The glass-topped dining table and coffee table have rounded edges. If Eisenberg stumbles, she will not hurt herself on sharp corners. Both the top and the base of the dining table are designed to help Eisenberg get up from the table with ease and grace. The glass is an inch thick, strong enough to let her push off with her hands, while the broad base allows her to push off with her feet.
The bedroom has a hospital bed, its rails discreetly covered by the monogrammed, peach-colored cotton spread. In the floor-to-ceiling storage units, drawers roll out effortlessly.
The closet has a 44-inch-square ”rolling-around area,” in which Eisenberg can turn in her wheelchair, LaSota said.
The gray and white bathroom is the most detailed room. Eisenberg can wheel up to the sink and into the shower. On a day when she feels strong, she can stand in the shower, hold onto grab bars and let the water spray her.
On days when she doesn`t have the strength to stand under the shower, she can stay in the wheelchair and use either of two hand showers. Whether she is in her wheelchair or on the toilet, she also can reach over to a mounted hand mirror and swivel it toward her.
She still needs help
Though the apartment is carefully thought out, Eisenberg cannot live alone. Her husband and housekeeper share the apartment. The housekeeper helps Eisenberg with what rehabilitation specialists call ”adult daily life.”
”She dries me off after a shower, buttons my clothes and ties the shoelaces,” Eisenberg said.
She and her husband, a Wall Street trader, occasionally go to concerts, the theater and restaurants. Because it is hard for her to cut her food, she chooses food that doesn`t require any cutting. ”Hamburgers, pasta, Chinese noodles,” she said. ”I`ve learned how to eat without a knife.”
Eisenberg developed the first signs of the disease when she was 25, three years after she and her husband were married. For more than 12 years, she was unaware that the symptoms were of multiple sclerosis, which affects the central nervous system and causes speech defects and loss of coordination.
She lost and regained her vision twice, first in the right eye, later in the left. She stumbled now and then and knocked over lamps. Sometimes her body became numb and tingly. But no one, including her mother, husband or doctors, who all knew she had multiple sclerosis, told her the truth.
”The first two years, when I`d fall and think I was clumsy or go blind and think it was hysterical blindness, the doctors told me it was neuritis, an inflammation of the nerve-a catchall phrase,” Eisenberg said. About 10 years ago she read a magazine article about multiple sclerosis and called her uncle, Herman Helpern, who was also her doctor.
”No one told me because they thought that my marriage would break up,”
Eisenberg said. The couple`s families believed that the two were too young to cope with the knowledge of multiple sclerosis.
”There was no cure, no treatment, no purpose to tell her,” said Walter Eisenberg, 54, who learned of his wife`s illness several years after their marriage.
She lived in ignorance
Eisenberg says she has no regrets about having lived in ignorance of the disease for 10 years. ”I might have had a nervous breakdown,” she said.
”We were too young, too immature. We might have gone from doctor to doctor, looking for the Holy Grail.” But once she discovered that she had multiple sclerosis, she understood exactly how she would live.
She still travels. For the last three years, she has gone to London each winter for 10 days, taking a nurse with her. ”I saw seven shows, went to restaurants and took day trips,” she said.
”All you can do about M.S. is live a normal life and forget about it.”
