Orestes' story
The walk was short, just a few feet across the West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital gym. For Orestes Fernandez, it felt like a marathon.
Leaning on a walker and with three therapists huddled around him for support, Orestes sweated out each step. And when he reached the finish line, the staff in the gym burst into applause.
The walk stretched a lot farther for Orestes than any tape measure can gauge. These were his first steps in weeks, and trying to recall what brought him to this rehabilitation hospital was like sifting through the pieces of a shredded photograph. The 32-year-old remembers waking up after working a late shift at his job at Goya Foods feeling sick. His left foot felt numb. Then, he awoke on his kitchen floor, having fallen. Orestes prayed for help.
When his senses started to return, Orestes opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. Now he was in a bed at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. He couldn’t move the left side of his body. He couldn’t even roll over.
All of his plans seemed dead. Orestes had moved to the U.S. from Cuba when he was 15. Three years later, he started working to help his parents pay the bills. Two years ago, he lost his father to cancer and took it hard, but around the same time he met a girl. She lives in Mexico. Orestes dreams of moving there and starting a family with her.
But now, he could barely move. The stark reality was that he’d suffered a hemorrhagic stroke – a ruptured blood vessel in the brain. After a five-day stay at Jackson Memorial, his care team recommended West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital, where a physician-led team of physical, occupational and speech therapists joined with nurses, dieticians and pharmacists to help Orestes get his dreams back.
At first, that seemed unlikely. At West Gables, the full scope of what Orestes had to overcome came into focus. Walking was out at first – his whole left side was paralyzed. So was getting dressed, moving from his bed to a wheelchair or vice versa. He couldn’t even go to the bathroom without an entourage.
“I felt very unmotivated, depressed, weak, scared,” Orestes said, “and above all, I had lost hope.”
What he found at West Gables, though, was a team of hope experts. Occupational therapists started him with exercises to strengthen his left arm. They used electrostimulation, adhering electrodes over the arm muscles and employing a mild pulse that caused them to contract. Then the therapist had him try dressing himself, bathing and brushing his teeth.
Slowly, he began to feel some his old strength returning. The haze was lifting.
Similarly, a physical therapist used the electrostimulation tool on his left leg as he performed resistance exercises. Weeks passed.
Orestes worked hard and slowly felt more of his old abilities coming back.
Getting around on his own two feet had been his goal when he first arrived, but it seemed like such a lofty achievement and until that day with the walker it seemed out of his reach. The physical therapist’s strategy began with strength exercises, and soon he was taking tentative steps with a walker and then a cane.
Orestes’ memory and ability to process thoughts was hazy, so a speech language pathologist worked with him during his daily activities, offering games and exercises to improve his ability to speak and remember. Among his impediments to walking wasn’t just a lack of strength. He needed help with the sequencing, understanding how the muscles work together and in what order to making movement happen. Moving past this mental block took practice and attention.
As his time at West Gables progressed, Orestes was struck to find everyone pitching in and working hard to bring him back to his old life.
“Everyone has been so helpful,” he said. “The nurses with my medications, the [certified nursing assistants] who make my bed and help change me. The doctors who check in with me. Everyone has been part of my journey.”
His attitude began to shift. Soon he was walking over curbs and over uneven ground with no assistance but a cane. His therapists introduced stairs, and before long, as the muscle in his leg began to return, he was scaling them easily. He began using his arm – which at first he could barely move at all and had no range of motion – to get dressed. By the time he was ready to go home after seven weeks at West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital, Orestes could raise the arm to the back of his head. His grip was stronger.
And these days, Orestes’ outlook has completely changed. The transformation started the moment he took that first walk in the gym. Tears had sprung to his eyes at the finish line, and with his therapists looking on, and just as he had on lying on his kitchen floor feeling the hope drain from him, Orestes prayed again. This time out of gratitude.
“I felt happy and motivated again,” he said. “I realized that I have to make a lifestyle change because I want to live a long life, I want a family, and I never want to go through this again.”