John: “Everyone Worked Together”

John was working on his farm. He hopped off his tractor to shut a gate and his tractor kept moving.

“I tried to jump on it, like a dummy, and fell,” John said. “The tractor ran over me.”

He was immobilized with broken bones, fractured ribs and a punctured lung.

“Somehow I was able to wiggle around and get the cell phone out of my pocket,” he said. He called his wife, and within an hour a medical helicopter was taking him to a short-term acute care hospital.

He stayed there in the Intensive Care Unit for seven weeks and was then admitted to Kindred Hospital.

“Really, by that point he was still in critical condition,” his wife said. “He was totally dependent on a ventilator to breathe. The people at the hospital had done everything they could – we just needed to go somewhere where they had expertise in caring for vent patients.”

Almost immediately, the caregivers at Kindred Hospital began rehabilitation therapy and the process of weaning John from the ventilator.

“He had been on his back for seven weeks, and gradually they kept having him do a little more at a time,” his wife said. “The walking helped him strengthen his lungs.”

“I felt like I was making progress, absolutely,” John said. “I’d heard of Kindred before, but I didn’t really know what they did.”

Six weeks later, John was released to home care to fully recover.

“By the time we left, he was walking, breathing, swallowing and eating,” his wife said. “And it was the teamwork that was great.”

“The care was excellent,” John said. “Everybody knew what they were doing and everybody worked together.”

“Just excellent.”