Regaining Independence After a Fall

Profile of Byrdie Jackson

Intensive therapy helps an Orleans woman recover from a broken neck.

Byrdie Jackson was out walking her son’s German Shepherd, Chance, in a watershed area in Orleans in December 2008 when the rambunctious canine spied another dog behind a chain-link fence and bolted — yanking Byrdie 15 feet.

“He went under the fence and I went directly into it,” Byrdie, 79, recalls. “I fell to the ground. I thought I was completely paralyzed.”

She wasn’t, but the impact of hitting the fence full force broke her neck. She couldn’t move her arms or hands. As she lay on the ground, she called for help. “I was not thinking disaster,” she says. “‘Everything’s going to be fine’ — that’s what I kept saying to myself.”

Eventually four men from a nearby maintenance garage came to her aid. Within minutes, police and emergency medical personnel arrived to take her to Cape Cod Hospital. There doctors discovered that Byrdie had fractured her fourth cervical vertebra. Her spinal cord was bruised and swollen.

Six days after her accident, doctors performed a laminectomy, a procedure in which part of the bony structure of the spine is removed to relieve pressure. Four days later, she arrived at RHCI.

“Byrdie could do very little when she arrived, but she was so motivated,” says Sherri Tupper, M.D., a board-certified internist and one of RHCI’s hospitalists. “Our therapists are very good at customizing therapy to the patient’s needs, often starting at the bedside and spreading treatment out over the day according to the patient’s tolerance.”

Dr. Tupper monitored Byrdie’s progress daily. “Our goal is to identify and treat symptoms immediately so they don’t become problems that might impede the patient’s progress,” she says.

Byrdie’s goals were ambitious. “She wanted her independence,” says Stephen Katzenback, inpatient physical therapist. “Every part of our treatment plan centered on helping her return to her prior level of function.”

Stephen wasted no time helping Byrdie to start strengthening her core, including her abdominal and back muscles, and her arms. The exercises were key to regaining balance so she could get out of bed and eventually walk on her own.

Getting there was far from easy. For nearly three and a half weeks, Byrdie worked at a variety of exercises, all while wearing a plastic cervical collar that was helping her neck heal.

“I call him the taskmaster,” Byrdie says of Stephen. “He pushed me. I‘d be tired and he’d say I was going to do something and I’d do it. Next time I would be a little stronger.”

“She understood she had to put the effort in to get the result at the end,” Stephen recalls.

When Byrdie left RHCI, she could walk using a walker and feed herself. After a brief stay in a nursing home followed by home care services, she began therapy at the RHCI-Orleans Outpatient Rehabilitation Center, focusing on balance, strength training and walking. 

“Her easygoing, positive attitude helped when it would have been easy for some people to give up,” says Heather Merrill, physical therapist at RHCI-Orleans.

The RHCI-Orleans staff was so inspired by Byrdie’s tenacity that they asked her to co-lead their team at RHCI’s annual CanalWALK in September .Wearing a straw hat affixed with a plastic bird, Byrdie walked the three-mile route with her fellow Birdwatchers team, named for Byrdie and the Birdwatcher’s General Store of Orleans, which supplied T-shirts.

Today, Byrdie, who has survived two bouts with breast cancer, is back to driving herself around town, caring for her home, and walking the family’s four dogs. And while she still has some numbness in three right fingers and her neck can become fatigued, the woman some doctors feared might be a paraplegic can mow her own lawn.

“It’s a miracle that I’m as functional as I am,” she says.

The support of her children and grandchildren, who “all made themselves available,” was very important to Byrdie’s recovery. She also credits the RHCI staff. “The people are fantastic. The therapists were effective. The nurses were like angels. They were all just sweet and considerate. 

“I’ve had the best medical care,” she adds. “I couldn’t have done better anywhere else.”