There and Back : Paradise Valley Volunteers Show Patients What Recovery Looks Like

Bob Thomas likes to push wheelchairs. Like some streetwise tour guide, he escorts their occupants around the hallways of the rehabilitation center at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City. He knows the territory.

Thomas does this because he has been in one of those wheelchairs before. Three years ago, the 47-year-old spent four months at the hospital, recuperating from two massive strokes that have paralyzed much of the left side of his body.

A former surfer and avid cyclist, Thomas doesn’t waste time talking about what used to be. He still swims regularly and even bicycles several miles a day.

And, once a week, he volunteers at Paradise Valley, showing stroke and head-injury patients the way to begin making their own comebacks--the way he did.

“Sometimes, I’ll be wheeling around somebody I know is feeling sorry for themselves. And I’ll lean over and say, ‘Excuse me, did you have a stroke?’ ” he said.

“They’ll shake their head, and then I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I did, too.’ It sinks in for a moment. And then they turn and look up at me with this expression that says, ‘You had a stroke, and you’re pushing me?’ It tells them that there’s hope for them, too.”

Thomas is among a handful of volunteers at Paradise Valley who are former patients, returned to the scene of their initial frustration and pain.

There’s Robert Jackson, 26, whose motorcycle was broadsided by a pickup that ran over his head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. When the pickup backed up, it rolled over his head a second time. Jackson spent more than six months in a coma.

Like Thomas, he helps with the little tasks that keep a hospital running smoothly--carrying urine samples, pushing wheelchairs, dispatching medicine orders to the hospital’s pharmacy.

There’s also Rose Garcia, a stroke victim and native of Costa Rica who translates important therapy instructions for the hospital’s Spanish-speaking patients. Although she must walk with a cane, Garcia gets around.

For them, the volunteer work is just another form of therapy, a continuation of their progress even after their long hours of rehabilitation have ended, a way to help others while helping themselves.

“For a lot of these people, the volunteer work is their life,” said Joyce Haynes, director of hospital volunteers. “It’s been good for all of us to realize that there is such a thing as recovery beyond therapy, because most of these people have gone about as far as they can with conventional therapy. So what future is there for them? They come here to begin carving one out.”

Dr. Robert Magnuson, medical director of the rehabilitation ward and chief of staff at the hospital, calls the program unique in the nation.

“I don’t know of any other program that uses former patients as volunteers to this extent,” he said. “And I’m very knowledgeable of what goes on in the hospitals around the nation.”

Today, about a dozen of the hospital’s 250 volunteers are disabled. The program started informally several years ago when doctors,

nurses and therapists fell in love with a teen-age girl who made an amazing recovery from a severe head injury.

In time, the hospital began inviting promising patients back as volunteers.

Not everyone, however, has gotten behind the program.

“It was difficult at first to get some of the other volunteers to accept these people, the former patients,” said one volunteer staffer, who asked not to be identified.

“And some higher-ups in the hospital have been uncomfortable with the disabled volunteers because they didn’t fit the California ‘beautiful people’ mold. They’re not rich and lovely.”

But Haynes stands behind her disabled volunteers.

“These folks with disabilities are the cream of the volunteers as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “They’re faithful and dependable. They’re not off on frequent skiing trips or worldwide cruises; they’re here when you need them. To me, they’re the beautiful people.”

They’re fighters like Bob Thomas.

History of Migraines

Four years ago, Thomas was biking from La Jolla back to his home in Oceanside when he suffered the first of two massive strokes. His doctors later told him that his history of migraine headaches, coupled with the strain of increased exercise, had caused his attack.

Thomas spent four months in therapy at Paradise Valley recovering from the stroke, which destroyed 80% of the left side of his brain. He progressed from a patient who couldn’t sit on his bed without falling to one who strolled boldly out of the hospital.

“I’ve always been a Type-A personality,” said the former owner of an Oceanside catamaran and surf shop. “I like to compete, and I like to win.

“Before the stroke, there was nothing better than the fear in the eyes of a young biker knowing that this old man was going to pass them. I’ve always believed that I could beat somebody younger than me at anything I tried.”

Jay Flaherty, a speech pathologist at the hospital, said Thomas’ aggressive personality may have fueled his recovery.

“Normally, Type-A personalities will drive themselves to heart attacks and strokes,” he said. “But afterward, they end up excelling in their recovery beyond expectations.”

Hit Bottom

Flaherty has seen Thomas reach out to other stroke victims, making the same offer each day he arrives at the hospital: “Jay, who do you want me to talk to?”

“Bob Thomas hit bottom with his stroke, went as low as he possibly could go,” the therapist said. “Through his drive he recovered. And he sees it as his mission to talk with people on the bottom, to offer incentive from someone who’s walked the path before.”

Despite his forceful personality, Thomas’ own recovery has not been easy.

Even today, he walks with a pronounced limp, his left arm droops uselessly as if pulled down by invisible weights. Though tall and tanned with peppery gray hair, he often stutters and his vision in his left eye is restricted.

He can live with the physical effects of the stroke. At the hospital, he gets exercise from his travels throughout the building. And he insists on walking the stairs--even to the sixth and top floor--rather than taking the elevator.

He has learned to drive a car and to dress with one hand. “Dressing is a pain,” he said. “Have you ever tried putting socks on with one hand? But I’ve gotten so I can put a T-shirt on in the dark with one hand.”

‘I Feel So Stupid’

The emotional effects of having to surrender his athletic life, however, have at times broken his stride.

“I always used to hurry on crosswalks, almost run, because I always thought it was a courtesy to drivers, since I was in such good shape,” he said. “Today, I have to go slow. I feel so stupid.”

When he sees men a generation older than himself pass on the street, men with cigarettes in their mouths, who have never exercised a day in their lives, he asks himself, “Why am I the one who’s limping?”

And he watches people’s eyes when they look at him. “First, they land on my bad leg and then work their way up to my arm,” he said. “The kids look at me like I’m the monster from the blue lagoon. It used to kill me, but I’m getting my pride back slowly.”

Recently, just when Thomas thought he was winning the fight, his wife of several years left him.

“She just got remarried. And let me tell you, that hurt,” he said. “She stuck with me through the worst years, though. She just didn’t have the long-term endurance.

“I guess she just got tired of hearing me complain about not being the man I once was.”

Brings a Smile

At the hospital, Thomas fights his impairments with a dose of cynical humor.

“When Bob Jackson, another disabled volunteer, and I meet new patients, I introduce him as brain-impaired and myself as brain-dead,” he said. “That always gets a laugh, or at least a smile.”

But the depression he finds at the hospital sometimes weighs him down.

“One day, I wheeled around this woman who had just had a stroke,” he said. “She was so depressed, I couldn’t help it, I got lost in it.”

After work, Thomas bought a garden hose and put it in his car trunk. “For several days I thought about using it to commit suicide,” he said.

And, sometimes, he gets a funny feeling when he returns to the ward where he learned to walk again. But he has his disabilities on the run. Like one of those young bicycling hotshots.

“Coming back here brings back weird memories of being in a wheelchair,” he said. “But I always tell people that the time it takes you to get out of the chair depends on how much you hate the damned thing.

“The therapists would always say, ‘Push Bob’s chair over here.’ And I would answer, ‘It’s not my chair, it’s the chair.’ It was a sticking point with me.

“But it got me back on my feet a lot faster, thank God for that.”