When Chad Jackson told his wife he had a stomach bug, he had no idea that for the next three months he would be in and out of small community hospitals with a variety of ailments. Fortunately, he recovered, and his health improved greatly after three weeks of care and exercise at the UT Health East Texas Rehabilitation Center.
Jackson, 47, has been an over-the-road truck driver for more than 27 years, driving an estimated 2.7 million miles during that time. Still, he wasn’t prepared for the rough road ahead.
Multiple illnesses
The illness he felt was actually a bacterial blood infection that the doctors could not explain, and the symptoms were severe. He ran a high fever, his kidneys started to shut down, his legs became swollen and he developed a pulmonary embolism – a blood clot in his lungs.
He started to recover by doing in-hospital rehabilitation, but then had a setback. Getting out of his wheelchair one day, he fell, hit his head and got a Grade 3 concussion. He experienced brain swelling and symptoms of light headedness and blacking out periodically.
After recovering from these ailments, he restarted rehab, but got sidetracked again after testing positive for COVID-19.
Eventually he was transferred to UT Health East Texas Rehabilitation Center in Tyler to undergo a complete physical assessment and rehabilitation program.
“When I got to the Rehabilitation Center that Friday afternoon, it was a totally different environment than the other hospitals,” said Jackson. “There were nurses waiting for us at the door to help me get in a wheelchair. They asked my wife and me lots of questions and examined me. On Saturday, the physical and occupational therapists arrived to do assessments. The next thing I knew, they had me on my feet and walking!”
Jackson became a patient of Christopher Duncan, MD. “I have nothing but good things to say about him. He took time and went over everything with me. I can't say enough good things about him and UT Health.”
Goal: Build muscle mass and strength
Dr. Duncan and the staff set a goal to increase Jackson’s strength and muscle mass after laying in a hospital bed for much of the previous three months. “I have always been a big guy,” he said. “I'm 6’7” and 420 pounds, with a bad knee and hip and my right leg is fused to the right hip. This makes my right leg an inch and a half shorter than my left. But these details never slowed down the staff. They knew exactly how to handle them.”
The staff worked with Jackson to get him strong enough to eventually go home, be with his family and do things outside the hospital. His rehab work every day touched on three main areas:
- Occupational Therapy – grooming and self-care skills, strength and endurance training
- Physical Therapy – seated and machine leg exercises, sit-to-stand and bed-to-wheelchair exercises, (and later when stronger) standing exercises with parallel bars and heavy duty rolling walker
- Speech Therapy – Memory exercises in quiet environment and in louder settings
Through all the hard work, Jackson praised the Rehabilitation Center’s staff. “I was absolutely amazed at the care from the nurses, the techs, everybody. They helped me build my leg strength by walking stairs, which I need because I have stairs at my house that I have to contend with,” he said.
He also had high praise for Chris Mendoza, his physical therapist, and Sherry Williamson, his occupational therapist. “He’s been at this for a long time,” said Jackson. “He could tell when the exercise was getting to be too much and he’d have me sit down and take a break. The entire staff knew how to push me enough but not so much that it was impossible.”
Continue exercises at home
After he was discharged, Jackson was given a lot of “homework” to do and get stronger.
“I've got all kinds of exercises that I have to do for my legs,” he said. “They printed out a couple of packets of exercises to take with me. They also made sure that I was scheduled for outpatient physical therapy. There’s a place here in Gilmer where I'm going to work out twice a week for an hour each time.”
He hopes to return to driving again in a couple of months. “We will just have to see how well I do with therapy and how fast my muscle strength comes back.”
Jackson tells his friends and family how grateful he is for the entire professional staff and the excellent equipment in the facility.
“If I had known about UT Health sooner, I would have been there a long time ago before all this got so bad. I told my wife that from here on out, if anything happens to me, I want to go to UT Health, even though it’s 45 miles from our home. The quality of their care is so much better.”
For more information about the services offered at UT Health East Texas Rehabilitation Center, call 800-338-7293 or visit UTHealthRehab.com.