It started in the wee hours of the morning — a life changed with one icy step.
On March 12th, 2023, Fred Hunt started his daily milk haul for Valley Queen Cheese Factory. He arrived at his first stop and as he went around to unhook the hoses, he slipped on a patch of ice. He fell flat on his back and suddenly he couldn’t move anything except his head.
“Nobody was around because it was 4:30 in the morning, so I just started yelling,” Fred said. “Finally, one of the employees of the dairy heard me. But he only spoke Spanish. I told him, ‘Just call 911,’ and put it on speaker, and I talked to the dispatcher.”
Fred was taken to Avera Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with a broken neck. He underwent surgery to fuse his vertebrae. Fred also had a trachea inserted to help him breathe. After weeks in the ICU, Fred came to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals, seeking specialized rehabilitation care for injured workers, but completely dependent on others for everything.
“I couldn't feed myself,” Fred said. “I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself. I was pretty much bedridden.”
At first, Fred started on Madonna’s Rehabilitation Specialty Hospital, where his care team focused on stabilizing his medical condition and helping his body to heal. Madonna’s specialists met Fred where he was on the road to recovery, starting slow and ramping up his activity level to prepare him for more rigorous therapy.
After a few weeks, when he could withstand three hours of intensive daily therapies, he progressed through Madonna’s continuum of care to the Rehabilitation Hospital.
“His main goal was to get as much independence back as he could,” Dani Wiley OTR/L, inpatient occupational therapist, said. “His big goal was he really wanted to get back home. He loved to fish. He lives on a lake. He had a lot of desire to get better. He didn't want to put all that burden on June, his wife. So, he worked really hard for us and that was one thing that I loved about Fred.”
Using specialized technology, like the Lokomat robotic gait trainer, the Madonna ICARE by SportsArt, a motorized elliptical, and the functional electric stimulation bike, Fred saw progress in his arm and leg movement.
“When he left us to the next level of care, Fred was able to feed himself,” Wiley said. “He was able to almost bathe himself completely independently. He could get a shirt on by himself and he did really well with even getting his pants on because he was starting to move his legs really well.”
His care team also incorporated some fun outings to motivate Fred, including a special date night or two with his wife.
“That was really a morale boost for him to be able to get out with his wife and kind of see how that would go,” Wiley said. “Just the two of them.”
Thanks to the specialized spinal cord program, combining daily physician visits with physical, occupational and recreational therapy and around-the-clock nursing care, Fred continued to move through Madonna’s full continuum of care.
In the final phase of his recovery at Madonna, Fred participated in the outpatient Rehabilitation Day Program. The intense physical and occupational therapy sessions focused on getting Fred ready to go home.
“The high intensity of treatment that Fred received in the Rehab Day Program consisted of aquatic therapy lower-extremity-focused sessions. He also used specialized equipment such as the Aretech ZeroG overhead track system, (that allowed him to practice walking over various types of terrain),” Joyce Jaixen, PT, GCS, a Madonna outpatient physical therapist said. “The combination of interventions helped Fred to meet his mobility goals to ready him for discharge home and the next step toward return to work.”
After eight months at Madonna, Fred felt prepared to return home, but he also recognized his life will be different.
“You just got to think about where you want to be and how you're going to get there,” Fred said. “I hope to be productive down the road, working maybe at a computer, doing data entry or whatever. I've done a lot of that in my life.”
