Scott: Back Behind the Wheel

Scott works for a legal newspaper as a proofreader. One day he felt dizzy and was taken to the hospital, where he was found to have a large hernia and mass within his abdomen. During surgery to have these repaired and removed, Scott developed complications with closure of his surgical site and went into respiratory failure.

Scott was placed on a ventilator to help him breathe and required the care of a long-term acute care hospital. He was admitted to Kindred Hospital San Gabriel Valley.

Scott required an interdisciplinary approach to his care due to the complex nature and severity of his condition. He received respiratory therapy to help strengthen his lungs so that he would not need to be dependent on the ventilator to breathe. He also needed wound care to address his open abdominal surgical wound, physical and occupational therapy to help rebuild his strength back up, and speech-language pathology to help him start to eat by mouth again.

Rehabilitation therapy was very difficult in the beginning because Scott could not do anything without requiring a lot of assistance, even just moving in bed. At first the physical therapist would work with him at the edge of the bed, but as he got stronger he was able to stand using the tilt table and progress to being able to sit up in a wheelchair.

When Scott was discharged from Kindred Hospital he was crying because of the tremendous progress he had made. Respiratory therapy was able to help him breathe on his own, physical therapy was able to help him walk on his own with a cane, occupational therapy was able to help him feed and dress himself and speech-language pathology was able to help him eat solid foods again.

Scott still has more progress to make, but he was finally able to drive his 2008 Ford Mustang two weeks ago, and he is hopeful about the future.

Kindred Hospital San Gabriel Valley’s success is apparent in stories like this as well as in our quality scores – our patients and families rate our quality of care at over 91 percent and 99.6 percent would recommend Kindred.