Inova Rehabilitation Center helps local civil engineer return to a normal life
A Stroke of Luck
Life changed overnight for Arthur Osgood, a civil engineer and retired Army colonel from Great Falls, Virginia, last May 25. He had a stroke. When he woke up he couldn’t walk, sit up, move his torso or control anything on the left side of his body.
“He was essentially helpless,” says Christine Osgood, Arthur’s wife. “It took one or two people to help him do even a simple task like turning over in bed.”
By June 3, doctors transferred Arthur to the Inova Rehabilitation Center at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. For weeks, the physicians, therapists and staff helped Arthur regain control of his body through physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy treatments.
Doctors and staff worked with Arthur every day, and even went beyond their normal duties, attending a high school graduation celebration for his daughter.
“We had a family celebration after [the graduation], and one of the physical therapists stayed after hours and came to the party just to make sure Arthur could stand up and take a picture with our daughter,” says Christine. “That’s way beyond the call of duty and it’s just one situation where they showed their human touch. You could tell how much it meant to them that their patients and patients’ families were taken care of.”
Personalized Rehab
At the center, no two patients are the same. “Our patients run the entire gamut,” says Roger Gisolfi, MD, Medical Director. “The underlying fundamental is that our patients have all had some very significant and frequently life-altering medical event.”
While the most common patients Dr. Gisolfi sees in the center are stroke victims, he also treats traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, multiple fractures, patients recovering from cardiac surgery and more.
“Rehab medicine is one of the few places left where we practice holistic healthcare,” says Dr. Gisolfi. “We’ll take care of any organ system.”
To properly treat such a wide range of potential patients, the center’s team includes physicians and therapists from many different disciplines. “What makes the clinic work is the interdisciplinary organization,” says Dr. Gisolfi. “There’s total collaboration regarding the care of the patients. The team has created an organized approach and sets common goals to achieve.”
Returning Home
After about three weeks at the center, the connection between Arthur’s brain and body that had been broken by the stroke was firing again. Two weeks after that milestone, he was ready to go back home.
“We expected to come home and I would have to assist him with 25 percent [of his daily needs],” says Christine. “Instead, I would say it was maybe 10 percent assistance, and at the beginning [in the hospital] it was 100 percent assistance.”
Arthur is happy that he can walk around the house safely, go up and down stairs, and do everyday things like shower or brush his teeth on his own. However, as an avid gardener, he is even happier to get back to his garden.
“[The doctors at the center] asked him what was important and they really cared about what he wanted to be able to do,” says Christine. “[During his rehab], they had him bending, they had him walk on grass to make sure he would be safe, and they watched and showed him how to get up and down. He even pulled a weed.”
Arthur believes this commitment that the doctors, therapists and staff at the center have to their patients helped make his recovery process that much faster and easier.
“I attribute my pretty rapid success to two aspects of the staff,” Arthur says. “One is their technical skill of knowing what to do, but the other thing that I felt was probably just as important — or perhaps in some situations even more important — is the creation of a good environment, a very constructive and positive environment.”