INJURED - Shepherd Center
INJURED - Shepherd Center
INJURED - Shepherd Center
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{{ SHEPHERDALUMS<br />
By Bill Sanders<br />
{<br />
“I have to do everything in a routine or I’ll<br />
forget. My husband is great at managing so<br />
much of it, but if I write things down, I’m<br />
usually OK. It’s a challenge, but we roll with<br />
the punches. Camden is here for a reason,<br />
and like every family with infants, we have<br />
good and bad days.”<br />
Mike Dube and family<br />
Mike Dube, 43, of Boiling Springs, S.C., plans<br />
to play golf soon. He may not play well, but if<br />
he’s perfectly honest, he never did play particularly<br />
well before his injury.<br />
Since leaving <strong>Shepherd</strong> <strong>Center</strong> in September<br />
2007, Mike, who sustained a C-6 to 7 complete<br />
spinal cord injury, has returned to work as the<br />
director of marketing for a national distributor, is<br />
driving again and is working out with a personal<br />
trainer. And he’s being a husband and dad to a<br />
tremendously supportive family, he says.<br />
Mike was injured in a 15-foot fall from a<br />
beach house deck in May 2007. After completing<br />
rehab at <strong>Shepherd</strong>, he went back to work<br />
part time. But it was getting an adapted van and<br />
driver’s license in spring 2008 that has been most<br />
rewarding.<br />
“For my wife, who was having to drive me<br />
around to work and rehab on the other side of<br />
town, it was huge,” Mike says. “But also, I got a<br />
little more freedom, and any little bit of freedom<br />
I can get is good.”<br />
Mike and his wife have twin 6-year-old daughters<br />
and a 10-year-old son, who has assigned<br />
himself as his dad’s chief caretaker.<br />
“My son has been great with this from the<br />
start,” Mike says. “He worries about me way too<br />
much for a 10-year-old and wants to help me as<br />
much as he can.”<br />
As far as getting on the links again, Mike plans<br />
to play golf soon, thanks to the support of some<br />
great friends, who helped him get a ParaGolfer,<br />
an all-terrain mobility device that stands him<br />
upright to swing a club.<br />
When Brandi Ray Hamann, 31, of Warner<br />
Robins, Ga., was critically injured in a 2000<br />
car crash, doctors told her she’d recover<br />
enough to do a lot of things she’d always<br />
wanted to do.<br />
But having a baby was one thing they said<br />
she wouldn’t be able to do. Camden Michael<br />
Hamann, 1, is evidence to the contrary.<br />
Brandi underwent rehab for a traumatic<br />
brain injury at <strong>Shepherd</strong> <strong>Center</strong> following the<br />
crash, which killed her friend’s 6-month-old<br />
child, Michael. Brandi chose Michael as her<br />
son’s middle name in honor of her friend’s son.<br />
“My goal was always to have a kid – but<br />
not once I had this brain injury,” she says. “I<br />
thought I would never get pregnant. It was an<br />
‘oopsie.’ Doctors said I would never be able to<br />
get pregnant, or if I did, I wouldn’t be able to<br />
carry it because of the trauma to my body.”<br />
Brandi’s hip<br />
still hurts badly,<br />
and she gets a<br />
lot of headaches.<br />
Also, the lingering<br />
effects of<br />
the brain injury<br />
require her to do<br />
things most new<br />
moms don’t have<br />
to worry about.<br />
Brandi Ray Hamann<br />
and family<br />
“I have to write<br />
everything down,<br />
make sure that<br />
I don’t forget anything, like if I’m supposed<br />
to feed Camden at 2 o’clock,” she explains.<br />
Caroline Hazel, 19, of Fredericksburg, Va.,<br />
never doubted that doctors and therapists<br />
at <strong>Shepherd</strong> <strong>Center</strong> were experts. And she<br />
never got too discouraged while in the inpatient<br />
or day program.<br />
But her time in the Beyond Therapy program<br />
has been remarkable to her. “It’s amazing<br />
how I’ve progressed,” she says. “I started<br />
Beyond Therapy in March (2008), going<br />
three days a week, three hours a day. Now,<br />
I’m up to four days and have gotten so much<br />
stronger in every muscle in my body.”<br />
Caroline Hazel and <strong>Shepherd</strong> <strong>Center</strong> therapists<br />
Caroline sustained a C-5 incomplete spinal<br />
cord injury (SCI) in a fall when a balcony<br />
railing gave way in September 2007, just<br />
weeks after starting college at the University<br />
of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.<br />
Now, she has some ambitious goals. “My<br />
therapist, Candy Tefertiller, told me that a<br />
new goal for me would be to walk 50 steps<br />
on my own with a walker, maybe with one<br />
person helping me. That goal is getting more<br />
within my reach.”<br />
Also, Caroline is able to do more for herself<br />
at home. “I’m so much stronger now,” she<br />
says. “I’m able to do standing transfers with<br />
help from my mom. I rock forward and<br />
stand up. My mom assists me just a little,<br />
then I turn and sit. I know that my body has<br />
gained strength in every way. My core and<br />
my arms are stronger, too.”<br />
18 Spinal column<br />
www.shepherd.org