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Contact: Rodney Foushee
Public Relations & Marketing Manager
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Transylvania Community Hospital Celebrates National Nurse’s Day
BREVARD, N.C., May 8, 2008—Brian McCall was putting out fertilizer by hand in a remote South Carolina farm field when things went terribly wrong.
The 42-year-old Little River man and his granddad had traveled to rural South Carolina late last November to hunt deer on land they leased. With no signs of any deer that afternoon, Brian decided to sweeten a food plot before heading home. He walked the edge of a muddy field with a bucket of fertilizer as his 84-year-old granddad followed slowly behind in his F-150, using the truck’s headlights to brighten the way as dusk approached. “My granddad’s foot must have slipped,” McCall recalls. “Instead of hitting the brake, he hit the gas. The next thing I knew I was pinned under the truck in the black of night.”
It took a rescue crew nearly three hours to find and free McCall from the muck. “It was so wet and muddy, the ambulance couldn’t make it,” McCall says. “They had to finally use a four-wheel drive to go the last half mile on a logging road in the woods to get to me in that field.”
McCall’s hips were crushed by the weight of the truck. He suffered 18 broken bones and his leg was badly injured. He was taken to the nearest trauma center in Augusta, Ga. Eight surgeries and several skins grafts later, he was back in Western North Carolina at Mission Hospitals. “The doctors wanted me to go to Winston-Salem or another big hospital in Georgia for the surgeries,” McCall says. “I just begged them to let me come back home.”
In January, with pins and plates holding his hips together, doctors at Mission recommended McCall undergo rehabilitation. Initially, doctors wanted him to stay in Asheville. But McCall and his mother convinced them to transfer him to Transylvania Community Hospital, where his mother has worked for over 20 years. The last eight weeks of McCall’s recovery were spent in TCH’s Transitional Care Unit.
“I couldn’t have asked for better care,” McCall says. “The physical therapy and positive attitude of the caring nurses here at TCH have helped me a great deal. Having my family close by helped keep my spirits up. I’m so glad I got to come to Transylvania Hospital instead of somewhere else. I’ve come a long way in my recovery here.”
McCall was discharged from Transylvania Community Hospital to his home on March 20.
When Brian was nearing his discharge date, his trauma surgeon at another hospital was amazed at the recovery he had made. Brian was able to walk into the follow-up appointment and his surgeon said he didn’t know if that would ever be possible. Brian and his family attribute his amazing recovery to the personal touch of the therapy and nursing staff at Transylvania Community Hospital.
“I think I will be ready for deer-hunting season this fall. I was real lucky,” McCall says. “I know I’ve still got a ways to go to fully recover.” Brian is continuing outpatient therapy with Tom Hartz, director of rehabilitation at TCH Outpatient Rehab Services.
“Because we are such a small unit, we are able to provide each of our 10 patients with a very personal, individualized plan of care,” says Val Smith, director of Elder Care Services at TCH. “We strive to consider each patient’s needs and develop individualized care to meet the patient where he or she is, and guide them to a smooth and safe transition into their home. We’ve done such activities as planting a vegetable garden in raised beds and stringing beans, to ballroom dancing in order to build strength and confidence.”
Lydia Perry was driving her usual route to work down N.C. 215 last January when the accident happened. She was coming to work as a nurse on the Transitional Care Unit to relieve her coworker, who was pregnant and had a doctor’s appointment.
“I guess we just met in the middle,” the 52-year-old registered nurse explains. Perry’s car slammed head-on into an oncoming vehicle only a few miles from her Balsam Grove home. “All I could think of was to call the hospital where I work and tell them I wasn’t going to make it in.”
In and out of consciousness, Perry was flown by helicopter to Mission Hospitals where she spent 10 hours in surgery to treat 13 broken bones including a crushed pelvis. She stayed 11 days in Mission’s intensive care unit, with time on a ventilator to help her breathe.
Once she was stabilized, Perry’s doctors recommended she be moved to a rehabilitation unit in Asheville. “I just insisted I go back home to Transylvania Community Hospital for my recovery,” she says. Perry knew firsthand the quality of care at TCH’s Transitional Care Unit—she is one the nurses who took care of patients on the unit. Now her coworkers would be nursing Perry back to health and helping her learn to sit, stand, bathe, dress, eat and walk again.
“I’ve been working at Transylvania Community Hospital since 1977, and of course I knew the unit where I worked,” Perry says. “I knew they had a bed for me and I wanted to go to TCU.”
Transylvania Community Hospital’s 10-bed transitional care unit is “the best of both worlds,” according to Perry. “It has really been great here,” she says from her hospital bed two months into her stay. “We are close to home and we have excellent therapists, nurses and nursing assistants here.”
The small size of Transylvania’s Transitional Care Unit is one of it core strengths. “At larger rehab facilities you usually only get therapy five days a week,” Perry says. “And in a larger place you are mostly treated in a group setting with other patients with similar injuries. Because of our small size at TCU, each patient receives therapy seven days a week that is individualized completely to him or her. My surgeons in Asheville have been impressed with my recovery so far thanks to the individualized therapy and care.”
Lydia’s children are home schooled, and with the support of her coworkers and sisters in nursing, Lydia was able to continue home-schooling her children from her bed in the Transitional Care Unit. Her husband brought the children to her room every day on his way to work, and Lydia was able to use wireless Internet access from her hospital room to conduct school between dressing changes and therapy sessions.
With a few more months of physical therapy, Perry plans to be back on the floor at TCU taking care of patients again.
Nurses work long shifts, holidays, weekends and nights. They sacrifice school plays, birthdays and family gatherings in order to take care of the patients who need their professional and compassionate care.
“Taking care of Brian and Lydia was such an honor for all of us,” Smith says. “We knew them and their families. Watching them recover and grow stronger every day—these are the reasons we do what we do. Seeing Lydia’s children spend this precious time with their mother, helping her learn to walk again. Seeing Brian’s family learn to care for him daily—it is such an honor to be invited into the most personal, intimate times of someone’s life. These are the rewards of nursing.”
About National Nurse's Day
Transylvania Community Hospital celebrated National Nurse’s Day on May 7. In recognition for the commitment to quality nursing and the compassionate care given to their patients daily, all nurses and nursing assistants received a gift from the hospital, and several received door prizes donated from area businesses. Unique to this hospital’s nursing staff is the privilege they often get of taking care of their friends and neighbors.