On Oct. 24, Jody Jones of Flora added irony to injury.
While trying to remove an unsafe tree stand, he fell 22 feet to the ground.
The impact crushed his right heel and fractured his right femur, pelvis and some vertebra in his spine.
Still, Jones feels fortunate. “I don’t know how I landed like I did. I should have landed flat on my back or head,” he said. “The Lord was watching out for me is all I can say.”
On Aug. 16, doctors doubted Undray Love of Houlka could survive a brain-injuring ATV crash.
“They initially told me he would not make it through the night,” said his wife, Chastity. “They never gave us much hope, really. While we were in critical care, every day, every minute was life or death.”
Love ultimately endured brain surgery, a 32-day coma, a lung collapse and a serious infection. But he began an unbelievable turnaround after arriving at Methodist Rehabilitation Center on Oct. 1.
A Code Blue used to send Dr. Michael Montesi running to help a patient in distress.
But on July 26, the alarm brought people dashing to save his life.
“I don’t remember any of it,” he said. “They found me on the floor face down, and then I went into respiratory arrest. They called the code because I had stopped breathing, and they didn’t know if my heart had stopped.”
Like many of the patients he treated at Bolivar Medical Center in Cleveland, Montesi had been stricken with COVID-19. By the next day, he was headed by plane to Baptist Medical Center in Jackson.
Methodist Rehabilitation Center has announced Clinical and Support Service Employees of the Quarter for its Jackson hospital and external campuses.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, the honorees include Aubrey Seay of Memphis, the north Mississippi nurse liaison for MRC; Martha Gail Powell of Jackson, an environmental services technician at MRC’s main campus; LaQuana Davis of Canton, a respiratory therapist at Methodist Specialty Care Center in Flowood; and Domonique Singleton of Ridgeland, office coordinator for Methodist Physical Medicine in Flowood.
If he’d been by himself at Winner’s Circle Park in Flowood, De’Mon McClinton might have overlooked the odd sensation on his right side.
But since he was alone with his two young sons, he headed home. Now, he hates to think what might have happened if he hadn’t played it safe on July 22, 2019.
Just hours later, what started as a “funny feeling” escalated to a full-blown stroke.
“It could have gone so wrong,” he said. “My right side was affected, from my face to my right leg.”
After she broke her spine in a horse-riding accident, Kalyn Smith adjusted to her new normal the only way she knew how: by taking the reins.
“I remember when she first got here,” said Jacob Long, her physical therapist while at Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson. “At the first session, she said ‘I want to do everything I need to do to get as mobile as I can, to get back out there and do the things I want to do.’”
When Angela Malone asked for a hug the other day, her son, Adam, could only say, “Mom, you know I can’t.”
After muscular dystrophy severely weakened his right arm, the 19-year-old didn’t have the strength for a full embrace.
But mother and son recently managed an emotional clinch thanks to a device now available at Methodist Rehabilitation Center’s Assistive Technology Clinic in Flowood.
Known as the Kinova O540, the device attaches to Adam’s power wheelchair and provides dynamic mobile arm support for everything from hugs to mealtime tasks.
When Morgan Trosper shared a selfie on July 9, she didn’t know she was in the midst of a medical crisis.
The Louisville 17-year-old just felt funny and decided to tell her friends. “My body is doing something weird,” she typed. “My fingers, toes and tongue have started going numb.”
Initially, she wasn’t that alarmed. “You know how when your leg goes to sleep? That’s how it felt.”
But over the next several days, a crippling weakness began to progressively paralyze her limbs.
After being hospitalized with COVID-19 for 49 days, Tansy Rawls missed her own bed, her two dogs and food that didn’t come out of a hospital cafeteria.
So she initially resisted a transfer to Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson.
“I did not want to go. I felt like it was time to go home,” said the 55-year-old Jackson resident. “But they convinced me. And it was the best thing, because I couldn’t do anything but stand up, really.”
Methodist Rehabilitation Center has announced Clinical and Support Service Employees of the Quarter for its Jackson hospital and external campuses.
For the third quarter of 2020, the honorees include Pam Everett of Terry, a registered nurse at MRC’s main campus; Martha Davis of Madison, a financial counselor at MRC’s main campus; Rachel Cooley of Madison, a physical therapist at Methodist Outpatient Therapy in Ridgeland; and Susan Mitchell of Terry, a billing coordinator at Methodist Orthotics & Prosthetics in Flowood.