The day before his 19th birthday, Dakota Brockman sat in his room at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals. Sporting his planet socks, he was prepared to grill a retired NASA astronaut on every question he ever had about space.
“Clayton Anderson was really cool,” Dakota said. “It was fun to pick his brain about his thoughts on everything. I love the study of space, the history of it, everything about it. ”
From a young age, Dakota has had an interest in space and attended numerous camps at the Cosmosophere. Now as a newly promoted camp director, he is now focused on motivating students and making them just as passionate about S.T.E.M.
Dakota had also just started his freshman year at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas, but on the third day of class, he collapsed in chemistry class and the small hand tremors he had been dealing with became an emergency.
“I did a medical withdraw from school,” Dakota said. “I had been doing therapy and was almost back to baseline and wanted to go back to school at semester. Then in January, same story.”
Dakota was diagnosed with Wilson’s disease, which is a rare inherited condition that caused copper levels to build up in several organs, especially the liver, brain and eyes. In Dakota’s case, this rare neurological condition caused problems with speech, physical coordination and uncontrolled muscle movements.
“His presentation was unique and different from many of the patients we’ve seen,” Samantha Nelson, PT, DPT, CBIS, physical therapist, said.
“It was a great learning experience as I spent time researching different intervention ideas and strategies to help him manage his symptoms. We worked on utilizing relaxation techniques and focusing techniques to stay grounded while completing functional mobility to help him control his tremors. We also worked on various strengthening activities and tried to utilize his most controlled positions to help him work on intentional movements so that we could progress to more functional intentional movements.”
With his daily physician visits, coupled with intense physical and occupational therapies, Dakota made progress. He re-learned to walk with assistance, despite constant tremors. His care team also helped him find a wheelchair that gave him more relief and independence. He also re-learned how to manage some of his self-cares, including showering, which gave him more confidence.
Additionally, Dakota participated in daily speech therapy sessions to improve his overall respiratory support for speech production.
“As a result of the tremors secondary to his Wilson’s disease diagnosis, Dakota had fairly significant dysarthria impacting the volume, articulatory precision, and prosody of his speech,” Jett Stenson, M.S. CCC-SLP, speech-language pathologist, said. “This impacted his ability to participate in conversations with others.”
Much to Dakota’s liking, Stenson found practical ways to implement these different exercises.
“It was actually useful stuff and realistic practices,” Dakota said. “She had me call a friend, do voice messages, actual practical stuff which made me more motivated to work for her.”
His care team also worked with Tabatha Sorensen, OTD, OTR/L, ATP, CAPS, Madonna’s rehabilitation engineering program leader, to recommend and find a finger computer mouse that would allow him to use his computer independently.
“He practiced different skills using the mouse to open a Google Doc, open speech-to-text, voice his text and edit,” Sally Wallace, a Therapeutic Learning Center teacher at Madonna, said. “He said the finger mouse was ‘a game changer.’”
Dakota appreciated Madonna’s Therapeutic Learning Center for keeping his mind sharp and challenged. He worked on high-level math skills and maybe even taught the teachers a thing or two about trigonometry.
“He has a spunky, witty personality but he is also very intelligent and was invested in his care throughout his stay,” Sydney Watts, OTR/L, CLT, occupational therapist, said. “Dakota was ready to joke around and have fun, but also willing to put in the work to make the progress he was aiming for.”
While maintaining a positive attitude, Dakota also wasn’t afraid to take control of his rehabilitation journey.
“Dakota was a great advocate for himself,” Stenson said. “He was diligent about providing feedback to us therapists to ensure that we were completing tasks that were important and functional to him.”
His care team also learned early on that Dakota loved all things space and science, so they reached out to Clayton Anderson, a local retired NASA astronaut. And his resulting visit made Dakota’s day.
“My favorite quality of Madonna is staff transparency,” Dakota said. “Everyone has your back.”