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Argyle resident rehabs her way back to active
lifestyle after car crash
Sept. 17-23 is National Rehabilitation Awareness Week
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Argyle resident
Marion Miller relaxes at home |
GLENS FALLS – Marion Miller knows the exact image she wants to see signifying
she’s made it back after an arduous path to recovery following a debilitating
car accident last February: Lake George. More specifically, she wants to relish
the scenic vistas from the summit of Sleeping Beauty Mountain on the lake’s east
shore. And she wants the physical and occupational therapists who prodded her
every step of the way to join her on the victory hike.
Hiking was the last thing on Miller’s mind last winter when her husband Dennis
and she got into a two-car accident while running weekend errands near their
Argyle home. After the collision, the couple’s 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee landed
in a ditch, with the passenger side taking the brunt of the impact. While he
escaped from behind the wheel with a bruised knee, she didn’t fare as well,
sustaining a broken femur in two places, a shattered hip and a broken right
wrist.
“I thought I’d never walk again,” the 47-year-old Washington Correctional
Facility corrections officer later confided.
Following a five-day hospital stay that entailed surgeons inserting rods and
pins in both her injured leg and hip, Miller was transferred to Glens Falls
Hospital’s Inpatient Rehabilitation Center, unable to move her leg by herself
and facing the daunting task of “learning everything all over again.”
Taking inspiration from her nephew Jason, who still led an active lifestyle
despite a motorcycle accident three years ago that left him a paraplegic, helped
Miller keep things in perspective. “If he can do it,” she thought determinedly,
“I can do it.”
Her new regimen for the next 13 days started each morning at 5 o’clock. An early
riser anyway, the routine didn’t trouble Miller too much. Staff helped dress and
wheel her to breakfast. Following breakfast, she spent three hours each day in
physical and occupational therapy sessions to improve her range of motion in her
wrist and regain her walking mobility, with her schedule finally winding down
around 3 o’clock.
Miller, who led an active lifestyle hiking, riding her motorcycle and gardening,
found the busy schedule suited her style. Friends visiting her during her
recuperation remarked that she didn’t seem like she had slowed down a bit.
Bridget Lieberum, Inpatient Rehabilitation Center physical therapist, remarked
that Miller made “tremendous gains,” arriving at the unit on a stretcher and
walking independently with staff following behind with her wheelchair by the end
of her stay. “She worked very hard and was willing to do anything we asked her
to do,” she noted.
In March, deemed fit to return home, doctors discharged her from Glens Falls
Hospital. But more outpatient rehabilitation still awaited her.
When Bob Collette, outpatient physical therapist at The Rehabilitation Center on
Bay Road, first encountered Miller, he recalled she was still using a walker and
had expressed valid concerns about walking with a limp.
For the next four months, she came twice a week and eventually three times a
week for her hourly session. Starting her off with 30 minutes of aqua therapy,
bearing only 50 percent of Miller’s body weight, and another 30 minutes of
land-based physical therapy involving partial lunges, squats and resistance
bands, her therapists eventually shifted her sessions out of the pool as her leg
could bear more weight.
Collette recalled that his patient’s “very diligent” work ethic was clearly
evident through her Bay Road sessions and at-home exercises, adding that she was
particularly good at listening to her body’s capabilities and limitations. “As
the strength improved, her confidence improved,” noted Collette. “She was great
to work with.”
With each milestone she achieved –ditching the walker, tossing aside her cane –
she visited the Inpatient Rehabilitation Center staff to share the moment,
figuring she’d be touched if one of her former prison inmates ever returned to
thank her following his or her incarceration.
Her hard work and determination paid off: Miller proudly returned to work in
July – one month ahead of schedule. Admittedly, she’s still not 100 percent,
though.
“I still have some obstacles I need to overcome,” she said, adding that she
still walks with a slight limp and Dennis is discouraging her from jumping back
on her motorcycle quite yet. She hopes to the hit the open road again on her
Honda Gold Wing sometime before winter’s first snowfall.
In the meantime, the summit of Sleeping Beauty beckons her.
And even if none of the Rehabilitation Services staff take up her hiking
challenge, she probably wouldn’t mind. “Everybody there was wonderful. They give
you the tools and you have to learn how to use them,” she said. “I have a
new-found respect for the medical field.”
—30—
Sept. 17-23 is Rehabilitation Awareness Week. This celebration focuses the
nation’s attention on the powers and possibilities of rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation enables people to overcome injury or illness and live life to its
fullest. The observance salutes the determination of the nearly 50 million
Americans with disabilities.