Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — The following story is offered in honor of National Physical Therapy Month and the therapists of Lutheran Home – Albemarle and Sundance Rehabilitation: Barbara Blalock, physical therapist; Jamie Eudy, physical therapist assistant, therapy program manager; Sara Redwine, physical therapist assistant; Alisha Ritchie, physical therapist assistant; Betsy Cooke, occupational therapist; Annah Furr, certified occupational therapist assistant; Jane Clark, certified occupational therapist assistant; and Jennifer Robison, speech language pathologist.
Spurgeon Brooks will tell you he’s not a speaker. But if you ask him about his recovery from a tragic fall in June 2009, he speaks quite eloquently and from the heart.
“If it helps someone who hits rock bottom to find their way up again, then I will tell my story,” he said.
Last spring, Brooks wasn’t feeling well. He was having trouble enjoying some of his favorite foods, had lost a bit of weight and some strength, and was using a walker for balance. One afternoon, as he moved through his rural Richfield home, he stumbled and fell. With a sickening thud, his chin struck against a sturdy wooden chest, snapping multiple vertebrae in his neck.
When he arrived via helicopter at Carolinas Medical Center, few thought the lanky Stanly County farmer would live, and if he lived, paralysis was a near certainty.
Brooks underwent several procedures, including brain and neck surgeries. After three weeks in intensive care, a gaunt Brooks, bedfast and malnourished, with a cervical collar, or neck brace, and feeding tube in place, was discharged for rehabilitation to Lutheran Home – Albemarle.
“I have enormous faith in our therapy team, but his condition was so poor,” said the home’s administrator Priscilla Vint.
“I was skeptical.”
And so was Brooks.
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” he said.
“I felt so sorry for myself.”
Brooks, who turns 88 this month, believes he drew strength from the other rehabilitation patients.
“I’d watch the others,” he said.
“They were depressed, with long-faces on one day, and then the next, they’d be laughing and smiling. I finally realized, I had to let go. My only choice was to let them, the therapists, take the lead and do the best I could.”
From day one, Brooks had a rigorous schedule of physical, occupational and speech therapy, often twice a day.
“We started by building his strength,” said Jamie Eudy, therapy program manager.
“He learned to transfer, to walk with and without a walker, and to bathe himself again. And he never refused therapy regardless of how bad he felt.”
The cervical collar Brooks wore presented special challenges. His neck and throat muscles, weakened from disuse, were retrained when the collar was removed. Then, therapists used thermal stimulation to teach him to swallow.
Defying all odds, Brooks walked out of the nursing home 100 days later, just in time to watch the fall harvest. Husband to Alene, father of four, grandfather of nine and great-grandfather of 14, Brooks speaks poignantly of his family’s support. Though his sons kept the farming operation going by day, one always slept by his bedside at night.
“I don’t know why I’m still here, but the good Lord has a task for each of us and I guess I haven’t finished,” he said.
“I owe this (my recovery) first to Almighty God, and then to the nursing home,” he said.
“Their goodness and sweetness, well I couldn’t disappoint them.”
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Spurgeon Brooks is shown with Jamie Eudy, therapy program manager at the Lutheran Home.
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Brooks shares story of rehabilitation
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