INJURED - Shepherd Center

Photo by Leita Cowart
Above: Shepherd Center medical director Dr. Donald Peck Leslie has formed a
special bond with patient Pat Cocciolone, a former Atlanta Police Department
officer who sustained a traumatic brain injury when she was shot while
responding to a domestic dispute call.
+ “I was shot six times.
Most of my hip was
gone. I figured, ‘OK, I’ll
have to show them what
I can do then. Right
then, I decided to see
how much stronger I
could make myself.”
— Pat Cocciolone
Dr. Leslie and his team of physicians have formed special bonds with
the police officers they have cared for with both expertise and diligence.
Shepherd Center has treated nearly 100 police officers and firefighters
in the past decade. Dr. Leslie cites Shepherd’s care – combined with
the officers’ own determination, hard work, good fitness, and family and
community support – in sending these public servants well down the
road to recovery.
One remarkable patient that Dr. Leslie treated came to Shepherd
Center more than a decade ago. Atlanta Police Department Officer Pat
Cocciolone, now 49, who had been on the job for 10 years, was shot
six times at close range with a high-powered rifle while responding to
a domestic dispute in 1997. Her partner, John Sowa, was killed in the
incident. One of the bullets penetrated Pat’s skull, affecting her visual
comprehension, memory and ability to communicate.
“They could hear me on my radio trying to get help after I was shot,”
Pat recalls. “They couldn’t tell what I was saying, but I thought I was
talking plainly. I wanted us to get help; I did not want to give up. Part
of it is the academy training that I’d had. They taught us about how
we had to decide whether to fight or give up. I decided I had to fight.
Part of it is because how I was brought up. We were that way. I was not
ready to give up, and I’m still not.”
Dr. Leslie admits he’s pleasantly surprised by how well Pat has
recovered. “She was so tough from the word ‘go.’ She wanted to know,
‘How can I get over this?’ But I never imagined she would make this
much progress.”
With most of her left hip shot off, would she ever be able to walk
again? “Dr. Leslie said he didn’t know if I’d walk again,” Pat says. “I
was shot six times. Most of my hip was gone. I figured, ‘OK, I’ll have
to show them what I can do. Right then, I decided to see how much
stronger I could make myself.
“The first time I tried to pull myself into bed, my legs were dead; I
couldn’t do it. The nurse had to help me. Every time I tried, though, I
got a little stronger. I got to where I could walk a little at a time with
a walker. God, it hurt. I’d cry taking a few steps. But it worked. I got a
little better every time.
“I still have pain in different places in my body, and I can’t walk real
far. But more than 10 years into it, I’m still getting better. A lot of that
is because of Dr. Leslie,” Pat adds.
For his part, Dr. Leslie realized his patient – and friend – was getting
better while she was still an inpatient. With brain injuries, if a
sense of humor returns, odds are good that other cerebral capacities
may follow.
One afternoon, Pat and a group of other patients were outside
of Shepherd on an outing when she observed Dr. Leslie crossing
Peachtree Street without the benefits of a crosswalk or a signal. In layman’s
terms: He was jaywalking.
With the help of one of her therapists, she wrote an “official” ticket
to Dr. Leslie for the violation. They both got a laugh out of it. “She
decided to let me off with just a warning,” Dr. Leslie recalls, chuckling.
“But we took it as a good sign that Pat got back her sense of humor.”
Another portrait of courage and determination is Courtney Gale,
32, an officer with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department in
Athens, Ga. She has no memory of what happened to her in December
2007 when she was working an off-duty security job at a grocery
store in Athens.
Based on what others have told her, Courtney recounts the night she
was attacked: “A man walked in, took a knife off a rack and unpackaged
it. The attendant was telling me that this guy was doing something
weird. Then without any sign of violence or any kind of provocation
or warning, he turned the knife on me.
6 Spinal column