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By Elaine Sanchez
Brooke Army Medical Center Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas –When Kathryn Harris arrived for her first appointment at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Service, she was leaning heavily on a walker.
The staff told her to park it at the door next time. “They told me no walker, no wheelchair. You don’t need them. You’re going to walk,” said Harris, who is recovering from a stroke at the clinic in San Antonio Military Medical Center. “I knew then I could achieve my goals here.”
The clinic, located in SAMMC’s lower level, is a one-stop shop for patients with brain injuries such as strokes, aneurisms, tumors and severe traumatic brain injuries. Once referred, patients are assigned to a team comprising a physical medicine rehabilitation provider, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech language pathologist, psychologist, recreational therapist and veteran benefits coordinator.
“We manage patients as a team,” said Amy Bowles, the service’s director. “The treatment is more comprehensive and we are able to address more global goals. It greatly benefits the patient’s recovery.”
Harris said she’s come a long way since her two strokes last spring. The San Antonio native was driving home from seeing her husband, retired Air Force Master Sgt. Allen Harris, one day in March when a driver side-swiped her car. She wasn’t injured but felt ill as she waited for the police to arrive. That evening, her daughter, Robbie Harris, asked her a question about the accident, but didn’t get a response.
“I knew something wasn’t right and then I saw the left side of her face droop,” Robbie said. She realized that her mother was having a stroke. Harris had a second stroke at her outpatient rehabilitation center about a week later, affecting function on her entire left side, including the vision in her left eye.
She was provided home health care, but asked to be treated at SAMMC’s outpatient clinic. “I knew when I first walked in that the energy was different,” Harris said. “They were caring and nurturing, and pushed me to achieve my goals.”
Her goals, she added, included walking into her granddaughter’s school unassisted and “getting back into the kitchen.” Fortunately, the clinic is equipped with a full kitchen, along with assistance in everything from writing a grocery list to stirring a bowl with one hand.
“I made brownies here and everyone ate them up. I didn’t even get one,” she said with a laugh.
She’s also improved her walking with help from a physical therapist and an anti-gravity treadmill. “I cried when I first used the treadmill because I could walk again,” Harris said.
Harris is just one of the many motivated patients who have made progress in the clinic since it opened its doors eight years ago, said Bowles, who has been with the service since its first day. The military initially stood up the clinic, formerly known as the Traumatic Brain Injury Service, to aid wounded service members with concussions and other brain injuries at the height of the war.
“We’d get patients here three days after they received a concussion or a more severe injury in Iraq or Afghanistan,” the doctor recalled. The staff treated primarily active duty service members for nearly a decade but once the wars wound down, they looked to expand their scope to retirees and family members with other types of brain injuries to keep their skills sharp. They also provide frequent consults to inpatients across the hospital.
“The type of care they need falls right in our wheelhouse,” she said. “And we got a great response when we expanded our services. There was a definite need for comprehensive brain injury care among our retirees and family members.”
With every related specialty on hand, Bowles said she’s proud of the holistic care they offer both military families and civilian trauma patients.
Bowles said she most enjoys seeing her patients’ progress. She ran into one of her first active duty patients the other day and was glad to hear he was interviewing for a job and pursuing other interests.
“It’s wonderful to see how he’s building a new life,” she said. “It’s always deeply satisfying to see the progress our patients are making.”
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| Date Taken: | 12.01.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 12.01.2015 13:21 |
| Story ID: | 183189 |
| Location: | FORT SAM HOUSTON, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 212 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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