antiquity
03-02-2003, 08:46 PM
Physical therapy helps paralyzed man achieve life goals
March 02, 2003
Keith Shirk is floating face-down in the water in an indoor pool, his arms and legs dangling. It's a brief moment, but it seems to stretch out unnaturally in time.
It's been almost two years since the 20-year-old from Lancaster County floated in the water this way. The last time was when he slammed his head on a sand bar just off the shore of Ocean City, Md., on a June day that would become the dividing line of his life.
In that moment, Shirk was paralyzed from the chest down. If not for a friend who noticed the odd way he was bobbing in the surf and swam to his side, Shirk could have drowned because he was unable to do something as simple as lift his head.
Now, on a brilliant February day ripe with the promise of spring, Shirk is getting his second wind.
With a mighty effort that seems to come from deep inside his slack frame, Shirk begins to move. His elbow breaks through the water first as he thrusts it into the air and twists his chest, flipping himself.
Spent, he floats on his back, his chin jutting into the air, the water streaming from his bleached, short hair and a stubbly goatee.
His mom, Sue, watches from the side of the pool, where she has been pacing up and down, trying to use her body to shield her son's eyes from the bright afternoon sun streaming in through the windows.
Shirk has just stared down a demon and everyone in this humid room _ Shirk, his mother and two therapists in the pool _ knows it.
Recreation therapist Jessica Rickard is leaning over his head, as she supports his shoulders in the water, almost like a mother cradling a child.
"Your hair," she tells Shirk, "is going up my nose."
Everyone laughs, glad for a reason to. The path turns Shirk's recovery hasn't gone quite as planned.
At first, he tried to return to his old life as a college student, the one he had before the spinal cord injury initially left him unable to even scratch his own nose.
After undergoing therapy in a Maryland hospital and a Philadelphia area rehabilitation hospital, Shirk regained limited use of his arms and hands.
In a motorized wheelchair, the 2000 Manheim Township High School graduate, Eagle Scout and former marching band drummer, hiker and snowboarder returned to the second semester of his sophomore year at Syracuse University, where he was studying architecture.
As the weeks passed, he felt increasingly frustrated because of the limitations of his injury. He lost his focus in the classroom and felt left out of social events he couldn't access.
"I just realized things were different," he said.
Shirk is a very direct person, who talks freely about topics such as catheters and bowel training, who jokes about getting his rear end massaged as a therapist lifts him onto a mat.
He is candid about how difficult it was to accept that life was taking him on a different path.
"I was feeling secluded from college life," he said. "It was hard on me. I loved it so much."
Then he experienced a health setback that turned out to be one of several turning points.
Shirk developed a kidney stone. And he could feel the sensation of it passing. That surprised him and his doctors.
Next, he saw a television special about Christopher Reeve that showed the spinal cord-injured actor's painstaking work toward regaining movement.
"That gave me a hard smack to the face," he said. "I started thinking my life could be better if I became independent and then continued my education."
With that, Shirk shifted his energies from getting a degree to getting a life.
He was re-evaluated by physical therapists and discovered he had regained some sensation around his waist, and at the bottoms of his feet.
Shirk decided to take the plunge. Just a month ago, he checked himself back into a rehab hospital for another round of intensive therapy.
He chose Magee Rehabilitation, a Philadelphia hospital with 96 beds, 400 employees, a take-charge approach that requires patients to eat in a cafeteria instead of their rooms, an active sports team program for wheelchair athletes and a "lifetime care" philosophy.
For four weeks at Magee, he exercised his hands to regain as much movement as possible. He sat on a mat to work on his balance. He pulled and pushed weights on exercise machines.
The therapy was designed to strengthen Shirk so he will be able to transfer himself in and out of wheelchair and more easily do the practical tasks of everyday life.
"It's getting past sitting and watching your legs and waiting for them to
move.The way I'm taking it now," he said, "is to start living independently, as if I'll be in this position for the rest of my life. I'm not sitting and waiting."
These are Shirk's goals: Using a manual wheelchair. Driving a car. Working. Getting married. Having a family.
Since he recently left Magee, Shirk has hooked up with a personal trainer, who
is helping him continue his therapy in exercise sessions at Universal Athletic Club in Manheim Township. The facility also is adding a pool, where he hopes to do aquatic strengthening.
"I know all the techniques to do the stuff," he said. "My strength is hindering my progress. I need to push myself to work out.I'm going to work my ass off as much as I can."
Working out for people in wheelchairs is not something they do in their spare time, just to tone muscles or feel fit. It's vital to their very existence.
Magee occupational therapist Amy Bohn said, "It's a lifetime thing. His exercise is 20 times more important than it would be for us. It's a lifetime of adaptation and learning."
Shirk is thinking about eventually going back to school _ maybe to Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology _ for an associate's degree in architectural technology.
In the meantime, he applied and was hired for a six-month internship at Armstrong World Industries, where he will do computer-aided design related to flooring and ceiling tiles. He starts next week.
He has ordered a titanium, manual wheelchair that he hopes to become strong enough to use every day. The lightweight chair, tipping the scales at about 20 pounds, will free him from the 350-pound, hulking, motorized chair he now uses.
He hopes to learn to drive with adaptive equipment, so he can get around more easily with the person he calls "my medicine."
Ashley Siegler, 18, had a crush on Shirk since before his accident. Eight months ago, the Manheim Township senior began dating him. Next year, she plans to go to Penn State University to study occupational therapy.
Siegler, plus his own family, have fueled Shirk during his darkest moments since his injury, he said. His right hand bears the symbols of their support.
On his ring finger, Shirk wears what looks like a gold wedding band. It's a
"promise ring" given to him by Siegler, who wears a promise ring he gave her.
On the same finger, Shirk also wears a braided silver ring exactly like one worn by his girlfriend and mother, and an aunt and a cousin, Kim Keith and Caroline Reynolds.
On his right wrist, he wears a beaded bracelet. Keith and Reynolds made hundreds of them as a fund-raiser for his family after his accident. Shirk has not taken his off since then.
"It's a power thing," he said. Picture the future Shirk hopes for a cure for spinal cord injuries within the next five years, if not sooner. He allows himself to picture a future where he is able-bodied again.
He's been thinking about getting a tattoo of the international symbol of a disabled person _ the line drawing of a figure in a wheelchair _ on his shoulder.
"But I want to alter it with flames coming out the back," he said, grinning.
Perhaps the toughest and most profound work Shirk is doing right now is redefining his life after his injury, charting a fresh course that is uniquely his own.
"I try to push to find things that make me, me," he said. "I had a personality and things people associated with me. Now I have to start over. I want to find things that are my style. I want to start snowboarding. If I can't drum, I want to play rugby."
Shirk sits in his wheelchair along the side of the gym at Carousel House, a recreation complex for disabled athletes run by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation.
In the gym, the members of the Magee Rebels, a quadriplegic rugby team, are doing laps around a basketball court before their practice.
Formerly called "murder ball," quad rugby is a ferocious, fast-paced game where players zoom up and down a basketball court bouncing or carrying a volleyball.
Chair-to-chair contact is allowed and, in fact, encouraged.
The Rebels' practice is a testosterone-fueled, sweat-soaked bout, punctuated by the raucous clang and thwack of players' chairs colliding at top speed.
Shirk sits on the sidelines, shrouded in a hooded sweatshirt, unusually quiet. He is cold and tired from his earlier session in Carousel House's pool and initially hesitant to join the group, thinking he will not be able to keep up.
He carefully watches one particular player, a young man whose injury is very similar to his. The guy, who visited Shirk when he was in Magee, has a sinewy upper body and barrels fluidly around the floor.
With some encouragement from the other players and Bohn, Shirk gets into a low-slung rugby wheelchair and tries tossing the ball with Bohn. Soon, he has shed his sweatshirt and is doggedly pushing his chair up and down the sidelines,
throwing the ball and retrieving it, getting the feel of the sport.
"I push myself," he said. "I'm a perfectionist. Anyone who knows me knows that."
Back home now in his family's Esbenshade Road home, where his mom and step-dad, Dave, have added a ground-floor bathroom and bedroom for him, Shirk is itching to begin the next part of his life.
"What I think about every day is different than someone who is able-bodied," he said. "Someone in college is working on a project, or thinking about what they're going to do on the weekend.
"For me, I'm thinking years ahead _ is there really anything in life to look forward to? How will I make my living? How will I be happy? How will I keep busy?"
"I feel ready. It's like a second wind or something," he said. "I had to get out in the world to realize what I really want to do, what my goals are."
©NEPA NewsÂ*2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7232034&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
March 02, 2003
Keith Shirk is floating face-down in the water in an indoor pool, his arms and legs dangling. It's a brief moment, but it seems to stretch out unnaturally in time.
It's been almost two years since the 20-year-old from Lancaster County floated in the water this way. The last time was when he slammed his head on a sand bar just off the shore of Ocean City, Md., on a June day that would become the dividing line of his life.
In that moment, Shirk was paralyzed from the chest down. If not for a friend who noticed the odd way he was bobbing in the surf and swam to his side, Shirk could have drowned because he was unable to do something as simple as lift his head.
Now, on a brilliant February day ripe with the promise of spring, Shirk is getting his second wind.
With a mighty effort that seems to come from deep inside his slack frame, Shirk begins to move. His elbow breaks through the water first as he thrusts it into the air and twists his chest, flipping himself.
Spent, he floats on his back, his chin jutting into the air, the water streaming from his bleached, short hair and a stubbly goatee.
His mom, Sue, watches from the side of the pool, where she has been pacing up and down, trying to use her body to shield her son's eyes from the bright afternoon sun streaming in through the windows.
Shirk has just stared down a demon and everyone in this humid room _ Shirk, his mother and two therapists in the pool _ knows it.
Recreation therapist Jessica Rickard is leaning over his head, as she supports his shoulders in the water, almost like a mother cradling a child.
"Your hair," she tells Shirk, "is going up my nose."
Everyone laughs, glad for a reason to. The path turns Shirk's recovery hasn't gone quite as planned.
At first, he tried to return to his old life as a college student, the one he had before the spinal cord injury initially left him unable to even scratch his own nose.
After undergoing therapy in a Maryland hospital and a Philadelphia area rehabilitation hospital, Shirk regained limited use of his arms and hands.
In a motorized wheelchair, the 2000 Manheim Township High School graduate, Eagle Scout and former marching band drummer, hiker and snowboarder returned to the second semester of his sophomore year at Syracuse University, where he was studying architecture.
As the weeks passed, he felt increasingly frustrated because of the limitations of his injury. He lost his focus in the classroom and felt left out of social events he couldn't access.
"I just realized things were different," he said.
Shirk is a very direct person, who talks freely about topics such as catheters and bowel training, who jokes about getting his rear end massaged as a therapist lifts him onto a mat.
He is candid about how difficult it was to accept that life was taking him on a different path.
"I was feeling secluded from college life," he said. "It was hard on me. I loved it so much."
Then he experienced a health setback that turned out to be one of several turning points.
Shirk developed a kidney stone. And he could feel the sensation of it passing. That surprised him and his doctors.
Next, he saw a television special about Christopher Reeve that showed the spinal cord-injured actor's painstaking work toward regaining movement.
"That gave me a hard smack to the face," he said. "I started thinking my life could be better if I became independent and then continued my education."
With that, Shirk shifted his energies from getting a degree to getting a life.
He was re-evaluated by physical therapists and discovered he had regained some sensation around his waist, and at the bottoms of his feet.
Shirk decided to take the plunge. Just a month ago, he checked himself back into a rehab hospital for another round of intensive therapy.
He chose Magee Rehabilitation, a Philadelphia hospital with 96 beds, 400 employees, a take-charge approach that requires patients to eat in a cafeteria instead of their rooms, an active sports team program for wheelchair athletes and a "lifetime care" philosophy.
For four weeks at Magee, he exercised his hands to regain as much movement as possible. He sat on a mat to work on his balance. He pulled and pushed weights on exercise machines.
The therapy was designed to strengthen Shirk so he will be able to transfer himself in and out of wheelchair and more easily do the practical tasks of everyday life.
"It's getting past sitting and watching your legs and waiting for them to
move.The way I'm taking it now," he said, "is to start living independently, as if I'll be in this position for the rest of my life. I'm not sitting and waiting."
These are Shirk's goals: Using a manual wheelchair. Driving a car. Working. Getting married. Having a family.
Since he recently left Magee, Shirk has hooked up with a personal trainer, who
is helping him continue his therapy in exercise sessions at Universal Athletic Club in Manheim Township. The facility also is adding a pool, where he hopes to do aquatic strengthening.
"I know all the techniques to do the stuff," he said. "My strength is hindering my progress. I need to push myself to work out.I'm going to work my ass off as much as I can."
Working out for people in wheelchairs is not something they do in their spare time, just to tone muscles or feel fit. It's vital to their very existence.
Magee occupational therapist Amy Bohn said, "It's a lifetime thing. His exercise is 20 times more important than it would be for us. It's a lifetime of adaptation and learning."
Shirk is thinking about eventually going back to school _ maybe to Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology _ for an associate's degree in architectural technology.
In the meantime, he applied and was hired for a six-month internship at Armstrong World Industries, where he will do computer-aided design related to flooring and ceiling tiles. He starts next week.
He has ordered a titanium, manual wheelchair that he hopes to become strong enough to use every day. The lightweight chair, tipping the scales at about 20 pounds, will free him from the 350-pound, hulking, motorized chair he now uses.
He hopes to learn to drive with adaptive equipment, so he can get around more easily with the person he calls "my medicine."
Ashley Siegler, 18, had a crush on Shirk since before his accident. Eight months ago, the Manheim Township senior began dating him. Next year, she plans to go to Penn State University to study occupational therapy.
Siegler, plus his own family, have fueled Shirk during his darkest moments since his injury, he said. His right hand bears the symbols of their support.
On his ring finger, Shirk wears what looks like a gold wedding band. It's a
"promise ring" given to him by Siegler, who wears a promise ring he gave her.
On the same finger, Shirk also wears a braided silver ring exactly like one worn by his girlfriend and mother, and an aunt and a cousin, Kim Keith and Caroline Reynolds.
On his right wrist, he wears a beaded bracelet. Keith and Reynolds made hundreds of them as a fund-raiser for his family after his accident. Shirk has not taken his off since then.
"It's a power thing," he said. Picture the future Shirk hopes for a cure for spinal cord injuries within the next five years, if not sooner. He allows himself to picture a future where he is able-bodied again.
He's been thinking about getting a tattoo of the international symbol of a disabled person _ the line drawing of a figure in a wheelchair _ on his shoulder.
"But I want to alter it with flames coming out the back," he said, grinning.
Perhaps the toughest and most profound work Shirk is doing right now is redefining his life after his injury, charting a fresh course that is uniquely his own.
"I try to push to find things that make me, me," he said. "I had a personality and things people associated with me. Now I have to start over. I want to find things that are my style. I want to start snowboarding. If I can't drum, I want to play rugby."
Shirk sits in his wheelchair along the side of the gym at Carousel House, a recreation complex for disabled athletes run by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation.
In the gym, the members of the Magee Rebels, a quadriplegic rugby team, are doing laps around a basketball court before their practice.
Formerly called "murder ball," quad rugby is a ferocious, fast-paced game where players zoom up and down a basketball court bouncing or carrying a volleyball.
Chair-to-chair contact is allowed and, in fact, encouraged.
The Rebels' practice is a testosterone-fueled, sweat-soaked bout, punctuated by the raucous clang and thwack of players' chairs colliding at top speed.
Shirk sits on the sidelines, shrouded in a hooded sweatshirt, unusually quiet. He is cold and tired from his earlier session in Carousel House's pool and initially hesitant to join the group, thinking he will not be able to keep up.
He carefully watches one particular player, a young man whose injury is very similar to his. The guy, who visited Shirk when he was in Magee, has a sinewy upper body and barrels fluidly around the floor.
With some encouragement from the other players and Bohn, Shirk gets into a low-slung rugby wheelchair and tries tossing the ball with Bohn. Soon, he has shed his sweatshirt and is doggedly pushing his chair up and down the sidelines,
throwing the ball and retrieving it, getting the feel of the sport.
"I push myself," he said. "I'm a perfectionist. Anyone who knows me knows that."
Back home now in his family's Esbenshade Road home, where his mom and step-dad, Dave, have added a ground-floor bathroom and bedroom for him, Shirk is itching to begin the next part of his life.
"What I think about every day is different than someone who is able-bodied," he said. "Someone in college is working on a project, or thinking about what they're going to do on the weekend.
"For me, I'm thinking years ahead _ is there really anything in life to look forward to? How will I make my living? How will I be happy? How will I keep busy?"
"I feel ready. It's like a second wind or something," he said. "I had to get out in the world to realize what I really want to do, what my goals are."
©NEPA NewsÂ*2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7232034&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6