For years, Kent Hoesing was a familiar face behind the scenes at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals’ Lincoln campus.
Working in maintenance, his days were spent keeping the facility running smoothly — fixing equipment, repairing walls and taking care of the countless small details that helped the hospital operate.
“Changing lightbulbs, fixing the casters on a lot of the carts and over-the-bed tables,” Kent said. “Putting up signs and patching and repairing wall damage.”
But a series of unexpected health challenges changed the course of his life and led to an earlier retirement than he had planned.
After doctors discovered three blockages in his heart, Kent underwent a heart transplant on Nov. 14. What he expected would be a relatively straightforward recovery quickly became more complicated.
“I was completely taken by surprise,” Kent said. “With the bypass, everybody told me, ‘Oh, you’ll be back in four to six weeks,’ and now it’s been over four months.
Following surgery, Kent spent five weeks recovering at Nebraska Medicine before transferring to Madonna’s Omaha campus to begin rehabilitation. By the time he arrived, the long hospital stay and continued dialysis treatments had taken a significant toll on his strength, balance and endurance.
“When Kent got here, he had been in the hospital for a really long time,” Ronnie Clark, MOT, OTR/L, a Madonna occupational therapist, said. “He was really deconditioned; his legs were weak. His balance was off, so something as simple as standing at the sink just to brush your teeth was tiresome and hard for him to do.”
Kent’s therapy focused on rebuilding the foundational skills needed for daily life and improving endurance, stability and confidence so he could safely return home and navigate the community.
His physician-led care team simulated real-world tasks through Madonna’s Independence Square, a therapy environment designed to mirror everyday settings like a grocery store.
“We were navigating a cart in a small space,” Clark said. “We were turning, looking and reaching for objects, doing lots of head turns, which really challenged his activity tolerance.”
At first, Kent admits he didn’t fully understand the purpose of the simulated environment.
“He used to think the store was silly,” Kim Hoesing, Kent’s wife, said. “But when he’s standing in there and trying to stay on his feet and turn and grab things, he realized how challenging that was.”
Through therapy, Kent quickly gained a new appreciation for how everyday activities can become difficult after a major medical event.
“If you have to stand at the stove and cook an egg, it’s tiring when you haven’t done that in a while,” Kim said. “He developed quite an appreciation for those services. Nobody appreciates maintenance until you need them and maybe the same thing with occupational therapy. He didn’t realize how much they did.”
Advanced rehabilitation technology also played a role in Kent’s recovery. His physical therapists used the Proprio 4000, a dynamic balance platform that helps patients improve stability and reaction time.
“That was a great way to get him random perturbations and work on his balance reactions,” Cali Carlson, PT, DPT, Madonna’s Inpatient Physical Therapy Clinical Director, said. “His muscles in his ankles would tire quickly, which could delay his reactions.”
For Kent, the experience carried an added layer of perspective. After years of working at Madonna, he now found himself experiencing the hospital from the patient’s side.
“He had been in the walls of Madonna as an employee and now as a patient,” Clark said. “That really puts a different perspective on life, on what we do and why we do what we do here. Something from an observing world might seem easy, it’s a lot different when you’re in the shoes of a patient.”
Kent says that experience gave him a deeper appreciation for the work Madonna’s therapists do every day.
“Be open-minded about everything they’re going to try to do with you,” Kent said. “Because you don’t realize how far you’ve been set back by having a big operation like I had. It makes you very vulnerable.”
He also gained a new understanding of the role nurses play in a patient’s recovery.
“The nurses don’t get near enough credit,” Kent said. “I’ve never really appreciated how much work they go through and how much they really care about their patients.”
After five weeks at Madonna, Kent returned home and transitioned to outpatient cardiac rehabilitation at Madonna’s Wellness Club, where he continues to work on rebuilding his strength while maintaining the healthy habits needed to protect his new heart.
Using a telemetry heart-rate monitoring system and various fitness equipment, cardiac nurses at the Wellness Club track Kent’s heart activity during exercise to ensure he is safely pushing himself while staying within a healthy range.
“At the moment, I’ll have to continue dialysis three times a week and physical therapy three days a week,” Kent said. “I’ve got about a year to get back to my full strength and then I want to try and get some stuff done.”
With plans to get outside and work on the family farm, Kent can now look forward to the next chapter of life.
“He was just super excited to go home to start enjoying that retirement,” Carlson said.