After suffering from a stroke in 2011 in Massachusetts, Rachel Bowman has made progress in her recovery with the support of friends, family, and the Brain Injury Connections of the Shenandoah Valley. WMRA’s Ayse Pirge reports.
After several weeks in Massachusetts following her stroke, Rachel Bowman was flown to Virginia, where she was rehabilitated at the Winchester Medical Center.
RACHEL BOWMAN: I was told that if I wasn’t doing anything, like, within five years after I had a stroke, that I was not going to make any sort of gains or progress of any sorts. And I’ve been slowly getting movement back. So, it’s been a long process because I’m a very impatient person. And I want things now.
Diane Fink, Bowman’s mother, says Rachel has been in a couple of rehabs, and is now receiving treatment at home, with occupational therapy, or OT.
DIANE FINK: Her case worker was here for OT, and saw her standing up… and of course she still has a gait belt and everything, but Rachel… has come a long, long way from where they said she’d ever be able to do.
A gait belt is a sturdy safety belt worn around a person's waist to help caregivers safely assist with walking and standing. In the first few years after Rachel’s stroke, Fink says that somebody would walk behind her with a wheelchair, and she had that gait belt around her at all times.
FINK: There would be a bar on the side of the wall. And then the therapist would walk beside her. Because it’s her left side that is paralyzed. From top to bottom. And her knee could give out very quickly.
Fred Bowman is Rachel’s husband. He says he’s impressed by her strength and bravery.
FRED BOWMAN: They had you walking. Balancing. They were just walking behind you. You were terrified and they were walking behind you.
Fink says Rachel has had very good experiences with some rehabs, but some have not been as helpful.
FINK: Rachel has run the race of having real good rehabs, and then you have your not so good rehabs. I’m not gonna say they’re terrible, I’m just saying they don’t do like Winchester did.
She points to one rehab in particular, Harrisonburg Health and Rehabilitation Center.
FINK: They let her sit two weeks and then treated her like she just had a stroke, and each time we’d ask about ‘can you please help?’ … She’s laying in bed, forgotten. And they’d say, ‘we do things our way’.
Harrisonburg Health and Rehabilitation Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Fink’s claims. Fink said that’s where Rachel lost most of the progress she had made in Winchester, where they would have Rachel walking. Fink said that after they got Rachel home for in-home rehabilitation, they found out about Brain Injury Connections of the Shenandoah Valley, a non-profit organization in Harrisonburg. Rachel says she appreciates their approach to care.
Full disclosure: Brain Injury Connections of the Shenandoah Valley sponsors programs on WMRA.
RACHEL BOWMAN: The therapists take time to explain why they do certain things. And why certain ways that they manipulate my limbs are having a good effect… So, I’m a person who likes to know why things are done a certain way. And that’s really helpful to me to know which muscle groups they’re working on.
Ashley Dunlap is Rachel’s case manager and a certified brain injury specialist with the organization. Dunlap says she began working with Rachel in 2018.
ASHLEY DUNLAP: This is the farthest I’ve seen her progressing in therapies, since I’ve been working with her.
Dunlap says as Rachel’s symptoms have gotten better, and she’s been able to access different resources, and she has been able to make progress in a way that many medical providers thought was not possible.
DUNLAP: And many people told her that she would not be able to regain any previous mobility, and she has just continued to strive towards the mindset that she will accomplish what she wants to accomplish … in a way that’s step by step, and this is like the first we’ve been able to see her actually stand up and take steps. … This is a testament of just how strongly determined Rachel is, and also a testament that brain injury is not like an ending. It’s just only the beginning of how far you can go in your recovery.
Dunlap said they’ve helped Rachel with hurdles such as getting grants, and going through fundraising efforts to help her access equipment and services. She said that includes helping Rachel get funds to install a winch into her wheelchair van, so that she could safely get into the van.
Rachel says she tries as hard as she can to recover, because she has grand-nieces and nephews to spend time with. She says she promised one of the grand-nieces that she would take her to Switzerland, because she loves cheese. She also wants to learn to walk again with the two babies in the family. Rachel also has a nephew, who Fink says has been one of Rachel’s biggest cheerleaders in everything.
FINK: While he was young, and he was only about 2, 3 years old. She was up in Winchester, and they would go and visit Rachel in the hospital. And he would go, while she was sitting in a wheelchair, he have to get down, because his dad was a mechanic… and kick the tires and then say, Rachel you need an oil change!
Fink says Rachel’s friends and neighbors have been very supportive. Rachel was a reporter for the Daily News-Record, and Fink says her readers sent care packages after the stroke. Loved ones also organized fundraisers for her, which paid to get her home on an airplane when she was bedridden. And Fink says Rachel has always been someone who, if you told her she could not do something, she did it.
RACHEL: To be fair, I’ve always been a little bit of a daredevil.
And she says that no matter what, she will grit her teeth and keep going.
