By Jennifer Kain DeFoe
It's never too late-or too early-for a good Christmas miracle story, so here goes.
Meet Carl Cobb of Chatham.
In February of 2006, at age 72, Mr. Cobb was transferred from Cape Cod Hospital to Broad Reach Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center at Liberty Commons. Suffering from the severe effects of diabetes, he was bedridden and completely dependent. Medical staff pondered the need for leg amputation-and this wasn't the worst-case scenario. They quietly thought he might be a candidate for hospice care.
They say doctors and nurses make the worst patients. As a former medical editor for the Boston Globe and administrator at Children's Hospital in Boston, Mr. Cobb pretty much qualified. Because they almost always don't feel good, most diabetics are hard to get along with. And Mr. Cobb's condition was particularly painful. Let's just say when he arrived at Liberty Commons, he wasn't himself.
Yet, in less than a year, Mr. Cobb was able to return to the South Chatham home he's shared with Debbie, his wife of 48 years, just in time for Christmas.
This turn-around required an inter-disciplinary approach in not just caring for Mr. Cobb, but actually helping him to heal. It wasn't easy. As Kathy Clark, his primary nurse during the active day shift, recalls, "his condition went from worse to absolute worst." She describes Mr. Cobb at that time as "very challenging to deal with, resistive to any care from nursing to physical therapy to dietary counseling."
An initial round of tests revealed that Mr. Cobb was experiencing some kidney problems and was severely dehydrated. When evaluated for the potential of participating in the physical therapy program, Physical Therapist Mick Kennally, M.PT, gave the glum assessment that "he's not able to participate in therapy because of dehydration...and attitude."
Then came the first "miracle." Forty-eight hours of massive intravenous fluids reversed the dehydration…and changed Mr. Cobb's personality as well. According to Mrs. Cobb, her husband "was non-compliant when he got here...and within those two days his mind started coming back."
Kathy Clark concurs: "Once hydrated, he was a different man, very cooperative."
From then on Mr. Cobb, became an active participant in his own care; and the healing, though slow and painful, began. Twice daily dressing changes and surgical procedures by Dr. Richard Lewis to remove dead tissue from the wounds were extremely painful. But, with the aid of a dedicated nursing staff, as the debilitating wounds began to heal so did the whole patient.
A reevaluation led to the beginning of physical therapy. But this wasn't easy. Because he had been bed-ridden for so long, muscles had severely atrophied and just getting him on his feet again was difficult and painful. Just getting him to move from step to step required all of his therapists' gifts of persuasion...and Mr. Cobb's own determination.
This was mid-October. But around Halloween, once Mr. Cobb started getting better, the new goal was to get him back to his newly illness-adapted home for Thanksgiving dinner.
No, he didn't quite make it.
He missed by a month.
But a Christmas homecoming ain't bad, either.
(For information about Broad Reach Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center at Liberty Commons call 508-945-4611).