LEBANON — John Bayliss walked along the aisles of a warehouse in Lebanon, pointing out various pieces of medical equipment: there were more than a dozen types of walkers, buckets containing crutches of various heights and different canes. There were the toilet risers, shower chairs, bed rails and stacks of mattresses for accompanying hospital bed frames.
People stopped by on that Friday morning in Lebanon to browse through the aisles at the Upper Valley Health Closet, a joint venture between the Canaan and Hanover Lions clubs that has existed, in some form, for more than 40 years.
There were volunteers from Aging in Hartland looking for a walker for a community member they were assisting. A home health worker needed a commode for an older adult in Lebanon. And there was also Mary Weider, who had stopped by to pick up a cane for her mother.
“Everything I’ve come to look for they have,” Weider, of Hanover, said. “Honestly anything you can think of …. I just come and shop.”
Except maybe “shop” is the wrong word: No money exchanges hands. The hundreds — or more like thousands — pieces of used medical equipment are available to anyone who needs it, free of charge.
Weider, who works as a nurse in the emergency department at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, often recommends the Health Closet to her patients and their families who would otherwise struggle to afford the equipment.
“You can call John,” Weider tells them.
“John” is John Bayliss, 77, who lives in Hanover, who with his counterpart, Harry Armstrong, 85, a Canaan resident, are the driving forces behind the Health Closet.
During a couple hour span on a recent Friday morning, Bayliss took more than half a dozen calls: there was a home health aid who needed a commode for an older man she’s been assisting. A visiting nurse who works in Sullivan County needed a bed rail — and during a conversation with Bayliss figured out her client could benefit from a wheelchair too. He said he’d bring them down to a drop-off site in Claremont at the start of the following week.
“Just a typical day,” Bayliss said, shrugging. It’s not unusual for him to field 30 calls a day. At his work station are wheelchairs and walkers that need new brakes, along with other repairs. He works on them when he has time.
The friends are also often out on the road, alone or together, driving to all corners of the Twin States to drop off or pick up equipment.
Some months, Armstrong said he puts up to 1,500 miles on his truck and trailer.
On a Friday in November, he had carpal tunnel surgery. The next day, he and Bayliss were back on the road to pick up a ramp someone wanted to donate.
Bayliss and Armstrong regularly take trips to Manchester and Burlington procure items.
“If they’ve got it and we need it, we figure out a way,” Bayliss said.
But the Health Closet’s future is up in the air: They must be out of their warehouse space on Mount Support Road by mid-March. Now, a group of motivated Upper Valley residents is determined to find it a new home.
The goal is twofold: Bayliss and Armstrong are getting older. And while neither of them plan on slowing down anytime soon, they do want to make sure the Health Closet has a stable future.
“We want it to live beyond us,” Bayliss said. “We’re not going to live forever. It’s too good to let die.”
A growing operation
Armstrong and the Canaan Lions Club started the Health Closet about 40 years ago.
At the time, a health care practice in Canaan had a small room where it lent out equipment to patients. As Armstrong tells it, the practice was told it could no longer give out equipment due to liability issues and asked if the Lions Club could step up.
In the beginning, there were about 50 pieces of equipment, a number that is now well over 1,000.
The Health Closet moved around over the years, from storage units to the basement of the American Legion in Canaan Village to a garage owned by another Lions Club member.
Currently, the collection is split between a container in Canaan and the Lebanon warehouse, Armstrong said.
The majority of the equipment is now in the Lebanon warehouse on Mount Support Road, where Bayliss spends nearly every morning from 9 a.m. to noon assisting people who stop by.
Bayliss and Armstrong go way back. Bayliss lived in the Mascoma Valley and was a member of the Canaan Lions Club before he moved to Hanover in the 1990s.
When Armstrong had part of one of his legs amputated around six years ago, he reached out to his old friend: Would Bayliss be interested in filling in for him while he was recovering?
Bayliss agreed. Soon, his garage was full of medical equipment. Once Armstrong could resume his volunteer work, Bayliss continued on.
A few years later, a Hanover Lions Club member allowed her barn to be used to store equipment. Then, the member paid for a storage facility in Lebanon until this month, when she moved out of state.
The equipment in the storage facility needed a new home. Earlier this month, Hypertherm allowed the volunteers to move into part of a building it is renting. The company agreed to share warehouse space at 325 Mount Support Road with the Health Closet for free until the business’ lease ends in March.
“Each one was a step up,” Bayliss said.
Filling a gap
Health Closet fills a need others cannot, said Belinda Needham Shropshire, senior director of rehabilitation and ancillary services at Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor, said.
“If you’re a hospital you also can’t really be a durable equipment vendor without being a licensed vendor,” Needham Shropshire said in a phone interview. Hospitals cannot legally give out used equipment due to liability issues, she added.
Insurance also falls short.
“A lot of insurers won’t pay for many items of durable medical equipment,” she said. A bath seat, for example, “is a luxury item so it’s not covered.”
It can put a huge burden on families, both monetary and emotional.
Wheelchairs can cost between $125 and $175, “which maybe doesn’t sound like a lot but for people on fixed incomes that can make a big difference,” Needham Shropshire said.
Those costs can easily multiply depending on they type of condition they are managing, leading to hundreds of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses.
“How am I going to pay for this expensive thing? How am I going to get Mom home?” she said. “Sometimes somebody going home, that wheelchair, that walker, that commode, is what keeps them independent in their home. Sometimes that’s all they need is that one piece of equipment.”
Needham Shropshire, who has worked as an occupational and physical therapist for more than 40 years, said health care providers talk to patients about household items they have that could be repurposed as something else.
“We were constantly trying to come up with a creative solution,” she said. “It’s your lawn chair today and tomorrow it’s your tub shower chair.”
That’s one of the reasons Needham Shropshire and other medical providers are also working to figure out a way to keep the Health Closet going: Their patients and their families depend on it.
“For some people it’s desperation. They’re not going to get it any other way,” she said. “(Bayliss is) taking perfectly useful pieces of equipment and trying to get them in the right hands. It’s a crime that we don’t have a better way to support him.”
Plotting the future
But what happens next isn’t clear. Going back to his garage isn’t an option. The amount of equipment that has been collected has more than doubled in the last few years.
Hanover Lions Club member Star Johnson has organized a group of people including members of the Hanover Rotary Club and Upper Valley nonprofit leaders to come up with a plan to make the Health Closet sustainable.
There is the immediate need of finding between 1,500 to 2,000 square feet of warehouse space to run it.
“Warehouse space is really scarce,” said Johnson, who works in real estate.
Then, there’s the longer term challenge of finding enough volunteers to keep it going.
“We just don’t have the people power to sustain it,” he said.
Still, the need is clear to those working to plot the Health Closet’s future.
“What is obvious to us in this brainstorming group is how much this is making a difference in the everyday lives of the folks who need this medical equipment,” said Helen Hong, executive director of COVER Home Repair & Store, a White River Junction-based nonprofit organization.
She is hopeful: Earlier this month, more than 50 people turned out to help the Health Closet move its equipment to the warehouse space on Mount Support Road.
Armstrong also is optimistic for the future of the Health Closet. He’s content to leave it up to people more experienced with the inner workings of nonprofit organizations to come up with a sustainable plan.
“I know good things are going to happen,” he said. “I don’t know how soon or where it’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen. I’ve got the faith that it’s going to happen.”
Bayliss, who has been part of those long-term discussions, tries not to let them cloud his mind too much. There’s too much to focus on with the day to day.
“Hello,” Bayliss said, picking up another call. “How can I help?”
People can borrow or donate equipment by contacting Bayliss at 603-477-8144 and Armstrong at 603-558-7298. For more information, visit healthcloset.org.