Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals’ spinal cord patients gain a sense of comfort when the medical director rolls into their room. He understands what they are going through. Dr. Paul Krabbenhoft, MD, sustained a spinal cord injury as a kid when he tried to retrieve a model rocket from a tree and fell about 25 feet.
“I broke my back at the T12 level,” Krabbenhoft said. “So since the age of 12, I’ve been in a wheelchair, functioning as a paraplegic.”
Krabbenhoft completed rehabilitation at the University of Minnesota and naturally gravitated toward a career in health care. Always a good student, Krabbenhoft enjoyed biology classes and after college at Mankato State University, he pursued medical school but wasn’t sure which route he wanted to take.
“I just kept my options open,” Krabbenhoft said. “I was looking at primary care, family practice, radiology and rehabilitation medicine was also something that was of interest. As a spinal cord injured person myself, the experience I had with how health care helped me to adapt and overcome my injury, made me more interested in the rehab side of things.”
In 1996, after graduating from medical school and then residency from the University of Minnesota, Krabbenhoft accepted a physiatrist position at Madonna. He recognized the opportunities and the flexibility to do both inpatient and outpatient services.
“It was an easy choice for me to come to Madonna,” Krabbenhoft said. “Then there was a need for a person to take on the spinal cord unit to become the medical director and again, that was a natural gravitation for me being a paraplegic and a spinal cord injury survivor.”
Krabbenhoft was drawn to the rehabilitation side, not only through his own experience but also the idea that his team gets to follow patients from a week or two after their trauma and help them with pain management, bowel and bladder issues, and a whole litany of things after a spinal cord injury. They also continue to work with patients after discharge to help them integrate into the community and see the long-term outcomes.
As for Krabbenhoft, he also relates personally and tries to motivate his patients.
“I hear every day that it was just very supportive to see a person that also had a spinal cord injury roll into a room and tell (a patient) ‘hey, look what I’ve been able to accomplish. There is a life after this’,” Krabbenhoft said. “Then I relate to my personal information. I was able to go on and get married and had two children of my own and lead a very active, fulfilling life.”
Since his accident, Krabbenhoft has participated in various adaptive wheelchair sports from wheelchair basketball to tennis to softball. He’s played wheelchair softball for 38 years and was inducted into the National Wheelchair Softball Association Hall of Fame in 2019 and the Nebraska Adaptive Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.
But with all of his accomplishments, it’s the satisfaction he gets from helping his patients from admittance to outcome that drives his passion.
“It’s such a rewarding, wonderful field I’m in,” he said.