Jolene Coffelt: Miami County Medical Center Rehab Patient of the Year

By Jeff Gulley

For more than a year, Jolene Coffelt has been working to get back the use of her left arm. A fall at home led to a long road of surgeries, painful procedures and doubt about whether she would ever get back to normal but the one bright spot in her ordeal was the Miami County Rehabilitation Clinic in Osawatomie.

Last week, Coffelt was honored by the Miami County Medical Center as the Rehabilitation patient of the year.

“I hear people say they don’t need rehab but I tell them they do,” Coffelt said. “I would have paid for it out of my own pocket if I had to. They are just great.”

Coffelt said she didn’t even know they had such an award but she was honored to receive it and honored to tell her story of how the rehab and therapist Theresa Pomatto helped her.

Coffelt’s ordeal began in July 2009 when she slipped on her hardwood floor and fell, breaking her fall with her left hand. She immediately knew something was wrong.

A doctor put her in a sling for 10 weeks but when that time was over, the arm was no better, in fact it felt worse.

“All I could move was my wrist,” she said.

Her doctor then put her through a painful procedure called a manipulation which put her back to square one. Her arm was immobilized for six more weeks and surgery followed.

The surgery revealed two broken bones in her rotator cuff and a 90 percent tear in the biceps muscle.

Another six weeks of immobilization followed but when the sling came off, the arm was still dead. Then came another manipulation but this time she went straight to rehab.

“I was in therapy from August 2009 to April 2010,” she said. “If it wasn’t for rehab, I don’t know what I would have done.”

With the support of her husband and parents, who moved in with Coffelt to help out, and more rehab exercises at the clinic and at home, she started getting better.

“I had 59 rehab visits,” she said. “I did stretching, wall climbs, pulleys, rubber bands and electronic stimulation. In April I was told I had regained about 85 percent motion.”

Coffelt said she was happy to have the clinic in Osawatomie so she could continue to work as a para-professional at Swenson Early Childhood Education Center.

“Our principal, Andrea Manes, was very helpful in letting me schedule sessions during the day when I needed,” she said. “Late afternoons are the busiest time and I often couldn’t get an appointment then.”

Coffelt was so appreciative of her rehab time that she volunteered at the clinic this summer and plans to continue to volunteer during breaks in the school year.

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Posted by Jeff on Sep 29 2010. Filed under News and Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry