When Gerry McIntyre suffered a sudden stroke last year, his whole life changed.
The 60-year-old Edgewater resident was left unable to walk, talk or perform the most basic tasks. In an instant, it seemed, his idyllic family life had gone from easygoing to harried.
While he was in the hospital recovering, his wife of 17 years, Kimberlee, an office manager, was left to care for their two young children and the household: the errands, the shopping, the cleaning, the kids' appointments and activities.
The hectic pace continued even after Gerry was discharged, because his wife was determined, as daunting as it was, to find a rehabilitation center close to home that would meet her husband's medical needs.
Kimberlee discovered the ideal place for Gerry in the form of Sky Neurological Rehabilitation, a new for-profit outpatient facility in Annapolis designed to treat people who have suffered brain injuries, strokes or aneurysms or who have other neurological conditions.
"The fact that Sky is comprehensive and offers all of those therapies is so valuable, because I would have been spending my time running him back and forth from one appointment to another to another to another," Kimberlee McIntyre said recently.
Officials at Sky, which opened in November on Admiral Cochrane Drive, say they chose Annapolis because of its proximity to Anne Arundel Medical Center and the Maryland Neurological Institute, which houses neurosurgeons, neurologists and physical medicine physicians from around the state. Sky's founders also liked the idea of being located between Washington and Baltimore and being accessible to people from the Eastern Shore as well as neighboring Prince George's, Howard and Baltimore counties.
Sky gets its patients primarily from hospital case managers and social workers, physicians and insurance case managers. Occasionally, patients are referred by the Brain Injury Association of Maryland and by people in the community.
The only facility of its kind in the county, Sky bills itself as a place where clients can receive a mix of treatments -- including nursing and physical, occupational and speech therapy -- under one roof. Sky also has a medical director who oversees treatments and a neuropsychologist who counsels people with brain injuries.
Patients can receive up to six hours of therapy a day. The facility also works with people who have spinal cord injuries and other conditions, such as multiple sclerosis.
"It wasn't just a cool idea," said Sharon D. Sauls, a Sky founder and its chief executive. "It was researched and proven that the standard of care for this type of neurological injury is the model that Sky has."
It's turned out to be the model for the McIntyres, too, said Kimberlee, who likes the idea of Sky's mission of helping patients return to their normal lives and jobs, which for Gerry would mean eventually going back to work as a safety service patroller for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Had the family not found Sky, Kimberlee said, she might not have been able to continue her job at an Annapolis engineering firm.
"It's simple," said Sauls, who has worked for years in health care administration. "Our people were working people, homeowners, caregivers, home providers. They are people who really need to get back to what they were doing before [their injuries]."
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Sky officials say the inspiration for their facility was a 1998 National Institutes of Health study on brain injuries that said the best kind of rehabilitation comes from programs that offer community-based therapies. So that's what the founders set out to create.
The result is a facility that treats no more than 20 clients at a time. The patients are men and women who are at least 16 years old and have had some kind of brain injury or other neurological condition.
The average patient age is about 46, according to Sky. A typical treatment day includes small- and large-group activities that vary weekly depending on clients' needs, as well as individual therapies. Most clients participate in intense five-day-a-week sessions. As they progress, they can reduce the number of sessions to a few or just one a week.
Yvette Valiente, a co-founder and Sky's chief operations officer, is a therapist who has worked in neuro-rehabilitation for 13 years. She said many of the therapies focus on practical matters and on getting clients to help themselves.
Valiente and Sauls founded Sky with Tanya R. Curtis, who heads the board of directors.
"It's a lot of the functional approach to things, where you put them in a situation that they're going to need to handle and see how they do," said Valiente. "We give them strategies for that."
For example, patients might be asked to take a short list to the grocery store, or to visit the bank or post office, as part of their therapy. Using the community as a therapeutic setting, Sky attempts to return people to their normal routines as much as possible, officials say.
"Neurological rehabilitation is a different science than orthopedic rehabilitation," said Sauls, adding that the goal is to help people overcome their fears about resuming the mundane tasks of life. "While we care that they can walk 150 feet, we want to make sure they remember where they're going. When distractions come up, we don't want them to lose it."
According to the Brain Injury Association, more than 6,000 people each year suffer brain injuries in the state of Maryland, many more than Sky and other facilities can accommodate.
"There's a lot more need than we can even fill," Valiente said.
Officials expect Sky to help rehabilitate more than 100 people annually. "Not a lot of states have this type of program, yet it's a service that needs to happen so that people get the right care," Valiente said.
Sky clinicians all have experience in neuro-rehabilitation. But it's not just their credentials that appeal to patients and their families. With all the stress her family has dealt with in recent months, Kimberlee McIntyre said, she is impressed by the amount of heart Sky's staff members put into their work.
"They don't separate themselves from their patients," she said. "They cheer and laugh and clap and encourage them. Their hearts are in it, and that's the difference that Sky makes."
Sky Neurological Rehabilitation is located at 190 Admiral Cochrane Dr., Suite 180, in Annapolis. To visit or for more information, call 410-571-6411 or go to the Web site at www.skyneurorehab.com |
