Dancer Takes Steps to Recovery at Home

Rusty Frank would be the first to say that she is not necessarily a spiritual person.

Although sensitive and optimistic, the professional swing dancer likes to take charge and leave little to chance.

But Frank’s divine perspective changed June 2, when she landed on her head and broke her neck in five places while practicing a dance move with her partner Peter Flahiff.

The accident left her temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. She must wear a halo neck brace until her cracked vertebrae heals.

As she recovers from her injuries, Frank said, she has experienced an outpouring of kindness that has deepened her faith in humanity.

“From the moment I was picked up off the grass, I feel like I have been in this cradle of thought, love and compassion,” she said last week. “I have this sense that this cradle will not be put down on the ground until I am 100% walking and dancing again.”

After 15 days of intensive physical therapy at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Frank returned to her North Hollywood home June 17.

Although Frank will continue her therapy as an outpatient, she said her return home is a major step in her recovery.

“It’s so good to be in my own home, to have my life back, to get away from being stuck, poked and prodded,” she said.

Frank’s life took a tragic turn on a sunny Friday afternoon while executing a move she and Flahiff of Santa Ana have performed numerous times.

“‘I was up in his arms and I was supposed to dive down through his legs and end up behind him,” Frank said. “When I went to reach for his legs, I ended up crashing on my head. There was a lot of cracking and my whole body went completely numb.”

As Frank lay motionless on the grass, Flahiff ran into his partner’s apartment to call an ambulance.

On the lawn, thoughts of life and death swirled in Frank’s mind. “I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is the end of my life,’ ” she said. “Then something said, ‘Yes, begin to fight.’ ”

Frank said she does not hold Flahiff responsible for the injury. “The first thing I told him was this was not his fault. It is the perfect definition of the word accident.”

Arriving paramedics gingerly lifted her into an ambulance and raced her to the hospital. She was stabilized in the emergency room and then taken to the intensive care unit. Three days later, she was moved to a room in the acute rehabilitation department, where she began therapy.

As word of the accident spread, family and friends kept a vigil at the hospital. About 400 e-mail messages papered Frank’s hospital room walls.

Lovelynn VanderHorst of Pasadena, who is teaching and performing for Frank while she recovers, said her best friend is learning to accept expressions of kindness.

“She is learning to receive,” VanderHorst said. “She didn’t realize how many people love and support her and want to be there for her.”

Although Frank’s condition improved enough for doctors to release her from the hospital, the dancer was fitted with a titanium neck brace that she must wear for three to six months.

“I’m still freaked out by it--knowing that the screws are drilled into your skull to hold you together,” Frank said. “Any wrong move right now and I’m either a quad or dead.”

Frank said she constantly reminds herself to follow doctors’ orders to take it easy.

“Rusty has a strong spirit and worked very hard to get back to doing what she loves: swing dancing,” said Amy Scheatzle, a physical therapist.

Occupational therapist Michelle Harris said she admired Frank’s perseverance.

“Rusty made a lot of functional gains quickly,” she said. “She gave 100% when relearning grooming, dressing and bathing, not to mention recruiting everyone into swing dancing.”

After getting out of the hospital, Frank went to visit her swing dance students last week at her Manhattan Beach dance studio. “I needed them to see me moving and walking and smiling.”

However, Frank soon discovered she didn’t need to be strong for them as much as she needed their love and support.

“I have seen the core of people that is good,” she said. “To have believed this my whole life, to actually see it on the faces of people and to know that it is really true, proves what I have always felt about humanity: People are good.”

‘From the moment I was picked up off the grass, . . . I have been in this cradle of thought, love and compassion.’