As the light of the Winter day is fading, streak begins for Wolfgang Degenhardt of luck. Full House, Large straight and Yahtzee in two rolls. Cannot get better than this. Slowly, the sixty-year-old, sitting in a chair with four rollers takes the five dice and puts them back in the Cup. Then he shakes his head. Degenhardt now looks like one who can’t believe he’s really lucky on that one. And, even if it is only when you roll the Dice.
Tobias Rösmann
editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
F. A. Z.
life has not always been on good terms with him. Now Degenhardt sits in his parents house in Bornheim. The parents are dead, he has no wife, he has no children, he has no friends. And seriously ill he is. Sometimes, the loneliness must be overwhelming.
Suddenly alone and a long medical history
In the living room of a care bed. 17 out of 24 hours Degenhardt is there. Each And Every Day. He listens to a lot of music, preferably classical, not pop. “And not this Rap.” The CD collection he has digitized for a long time, he listens to them via a Laptop. Degenhardt lives on the ground floor, the flowered Wallpaper in the hallway, wall unit, twelve painted plates above the radiator, a wheelchair next to the door to the small garden. At Degenhardt’s bed three framed photos: on the left the mother, to the right of the father, in the middle of the Old Opera house. A few years ago, the parents died in quick succession. “I was here alone,” says Degenhardt. “From then on, it went with the health down.”
His illness story begins in 2003. Degenhardt, in her mid-forties, 2,04 meters tall, weighs at the time, 170 pounds. He is too thick, to the legs, he has open wounds. Therefore, he goes to the doctor. The doctor listens to him and says: “your heart is not right.” Degenhardt comes to the hospital, the blood pressure is at 280 to 200, Healthy, have a value of 120 to 80. “Because you have kept me the same.” A complete blood count indicates Diabetes, in addition, Degenhardt suffers from “total Arrhythmia, and heart failure on the right side”. The hypertension is chronic. First of all, he only gets pills for the Diabetes and works as a physicist at the Uni.
A model project not only for the high age
it Gradually dim, in the living room. Degenhardt pushes the chair with his feet on the wooden floor to a table with a glass top. On coffee and pastries, because he has a visitor. Marion Hofmann is because she is the anchor in Degenhardt’s week. On behalf of the Protestant Diakonie station, she comes over once a week for two hours. Just like that, without a specific goal. His assistant in the fight against the loneliness. The model project, established in 2015, is called “community car”. About 25 Volunteers serve approximately 30 clients. For an expense allowance of € 12.50 per hour. Hofmann says: “I’m even old. Who knows how I’ll. The power is still there. I want to help. We are the next Generation. I’m scared that me then no one cares.“
