Recovery from Stroke: Back on His Feet!
Ken Haker had retired as Assistant Principal at Paul Revere Middle School for a little over a year. One Saturday morning, he woke up with a headache. He never got headaches, but this one got worse. His family was at a Boy Scout outing, so he called 911. He had a massive bleed in his brain, which doctors couldn’t find. It corrected itself and they never found the source.
Ken’s wife Gerry said, “Ken is diabetic and he was put on blood thinners. I wondered whether either of those were the cause of the stroke.
For five weeks Ken was in Intensive Care with blood dripping from his brain. He was in a coma for several days. The prognosis did not look good at that point. In total, he was in the hospital for seven weeks. At the six-week mark, he had a crisis – the small capillaries shut down. To keep them open, doctors had to get his blood pressure up high, and he made it through that well. “He had machines and tubes everywhere, like in a horror movie,” Gerry said.
After the neurological event was past, he was transferred to a rehab center for one hundred days. He got bed sores and had pneumonia. His right arm hung down, dislocated, and the staff seemed to write him off, saying therapy wouldn’t do him much good. He got ten minutes of passive movement from the therapists each day.
When Ken went home, in-home physical and occupational therapists came to him. “The OT was great,” Gerry said. “They worked on getting him to use his arm. We became encouraged. This was almost the one-year mark.”
Ken went to Good Samaritan Hospital for a two-week intensive program with the goal of getting off a feeding tube and becoming able to eat again. Two weeks later, his swallowing was weak, but he could eat soft food without the tube. Gerry said, “they also taught us how to transfer him from his wheelchair into a car so that we didn’t have to rely on transportation services. That was huge!”
In the middle of 2011, he started at a Physical Therapy clinic specializing in neurological cases where he became able to sit and stand with more control and was introduced to a walker. Finally he was progressing. Then came a fall in which he broke his femur (thigh bone) and several months later he fell off the bed and tore his rotator cuff and experienced a tear inside his ear that required four stitches. The two falls made him afraid of falling again.
The Haker’s dry cleaner told Ken’s wife Gerry about CompletePT. When he started in May, 2012, he was using the pool’s hydraulic lift to enter the 92-degree, salt-water pool. He felt safe in the warm water. “It’s scary for him to walk on land,” said Gerry. Here, if he falls, it’s just into the water. He likes how relaxing it is. And he likes his physical therapist, Eli English, DPT, who’s really good with him. Eli lets him practice walking without the walker, which he couldn’t do on land for safety issues. He’s standing up straight, lifting his right leg, and pushing his hips forward. Ken’s balance and confidence have greatly improved.”
He has made slow but steady progress. His overall strength has improved and his posture is getting better. Today, Ken enters the pool using the steps with the assistance of his licensed Physical Therapist. He maintains his land therapy three days a week and is in our warm pool two days a week.
Lynda Huey, M.S., founder of CompletePT and Huey’s Athletic Network, is a former athlete and coach whose own injuries led her into the water to find fitness and healing. She was educated at San Jose State University where she starred on the track and field team during its golden years. Lynda is the author of four books on water exercise and water rehabilitation.
