For a healthcare giver, being on the receiving end of that care always makes for an interesting story.
Kathy Lee Bishop PT, DPT, CCS, is the Program Manager at Emory St. Joseph’s Cardiac Rehabilitation program and she also teaches at Emory University.
Bishop has a compelling story to tell about the time she experienced the healing process from the patient’s perspective when her father had a life-altering medical event. During that time, Bishop spent a number of months being a loving daughter and her father’s advocate.
She says, “My father had had type 2 diabetes for ten years. He started to have worsening leg pain and cramping (claudication) with activity and then at rest. He saw a vascular surgeon in Vermont where he lived and then got a second opinion from a vascular surgeon where I was working in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He was evaluated and had a bypass of his arteries in both of his legs due to arteriosclerosis.”
Bishop says that after the bypass, her father’s course became complicated and he required hospitalization for three months. He underwent multiple surgeries during his hospital stay because the bypasses failed. Eventually, her father had to have both legs amputated below the knees due to the complications of diabetes.
She says, “He received PT while in the hospital and in the inpatient rehabilitation center at the hospital. When he was discharged he had to hop on a plane and fly back to Vermont. He then received home physical therapy for at least the next six months before he progressed to outpatient physical therapy.”
During his stay at her hospital, Bishop says that she tried to be a daughter and not his therapist.
She explains, “This was very hard because I was very protective and wanted to help out. The other therapists knew better and they took care of him.”
As a cancer survivor, Bishop was already well aware that being on the “other side” of the bed is difficult. She says that it is a struggle as a patient and as a family member watching a parent recover from a devastating hospitalization.
However, her father’s experience provided her with an excellent example to share with her students.
She says, “I use my father’s case to teach my students that limits are set by the patient. My father was able to be logging within a month of discharge via a four-wheeler. Friends put ramps on the back of our house in Vermont and he learned to drive with his hands and was very independent. My niece played basketball in high school and my father, even in the winter, drove out to the games to see her play. He did not think of himself as handicapped or disabled. He was able to live his life and enjoy his grandchildren.”
Of course, Bishop is quick to credit the professionals who helped her father for his success. She says that the therapists who took care of him were amazing. In fact, many of the therapists who worked with her father took part in her wedding the following year and are considered family.
As the daughter, Bishop had to learn to step back and remove herself from her father’s day-to-day treatment. She says, “This was hard because I am a therapist too, but I knew as a family member, my father may not be as receptive to what he had to do if this had come only from me.”
Even though she wasn’t actively involved in his day-to-day care, Bishop’s training was instrumental in helping her father avoid an additional and serious complication.
During her father’s hospital stay, a resident came to interview her father while Bishop was sitting with him in his room. The resident asked some orientation questions and her dad immediately responded. The resident seemed to feel that the prompt answers meant Bishop’s father was oriented.
However, Bishop knew better. She said to the resident, “Just so you know, I am not his wife, I am his daughter. The address he gave you was the house he grew up in almost fifty years ago, which got wiped out by a flood and he lives at a completely different address.”
Bishop adds, “I went on to say that an oriented man would never try to get out of bed on the opposite side of bed where a catheter in his bladder was hooked and missing a leg.”
Bishop feels that if she hadn’t spoken up, the resident would have gone back to the attending and reported that her father was of sound mind with no need of further evaluation.
Her father was confused and because of her training and experience, she was able to pick up on the subtle changes.
She says that her father ended up having to have his gallbladder removed in an emergency procedure within days. After the surgery, his lab values came back to baseline and her father was back fully oriented and ready to restart his rehabilitation.
Bishop’s knowledge and experience saved her father from the possible additional complication of a ruptured gallbladder.
Her medical training means that Bishop understood a great deal about her father’s care but she also learned from the experience. She gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about arranging air travel for someone with a disability and the limits that air travel imposes for someone in a wheel chair.
Bishop says though, that the best take away message from her experience is that it is important to have a role in a loved one’s care but it’s best not to be the therapist for them.
