Logan Wood couldn’t believe her eyes when a former patient walked happily into a Georgian Bay General Hospital inpatient unit.
The young man named Theo (Theodore) was smiling and carrying coffee and a box of doughnuts for the staff who had helped him so much.
“I literally burst into tears,” says Wood, who works as a physical therapist at the Midland hospital. “We had no idea if Theo would ever be able to walk again, and here he was walking on his own.”
But as Wood notes, Theo’s return to good health definitely wasn’t a given.
“When I first saw him, he was in the intensive care unit,” Wood tells MidlandToday. “He was so sick. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t swallow and he couldn’t breathe on his own. He was just 22 years old."
Theo had first arrived at the hospital’s emergency department a month earlier with uncontrollable seizures caused by a severe infection that was attacking his liver, lungs and brain.
The infection turned out to be meningitis and Theo was immediately rushed to a Toronto trauma hospital.
“We didn’t know if we’d ever see Theo again, but everyone hoped he’d make it and the doctors told me if he did survive he’d need intensive physical therapy,” recalls Wood, who grew up in Newfoundland where she attended Memorial University before moving to Ontario to take her Masters degree at Queen’s University.
Theo was put in an induced coma and treated with nine antibiotics before he was finally stable enough to come back to GBGH.
“So many GBGH team members were involved in Theo’s care,” Wood says. “We watched his family visit him. We saw his grandfather read to him while he was in the coma.”
Wood says it was truly a miracle that Theo was alive, but she and other team members weren’t sure if he would be able to recover.
“When Theo woke up, the first thing he said when he could talk was ‘I want a doughnut’. And the second thing he said was ‘I want to walk’," says Wood, who would later learn that Theo’s mother had passed away not long before her son's illness.
“This young man captured our hearts, and everyone came together to do everything possible to help him.”
Working with a team of physical therapists, rehab assistants, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, PSWs, nurses and many others, from weeks to months, Theo went from sitting up in bed, to transferring out of his bed, to a wheelchair to walking with the bars, Wood recalled.
“This patient was on my caseload for a very long time,” Wood says, adding that what might be different about therapists compared to other medical professionals is just how close the patient-therapist link becomes.
“We get to know our patients really well. I’m used to working with patients when they are at their most vulnerable and I’ve had some really special patients over the years, but no one quite like Theo.
“From his quick wit to his dry humour and his incredible perseverance – I’ve never seen someone more determined. Despite being in so much pain, he just kept working. Nothing would stop him.”
During one of their many long, hard sessions before he was transferred to another rehabilitation facility, Wood says Theo promised that he would return one day to visit and bring coffee and doughnuts.
“We could see that he was getting a lot stronger every day.” Wood says, adding that while Theo wasn’t on the hospital’s 15-bed inpatient rehabilitation floor, the team worked hard with him from his acute care room.
“Anyone who’s sick for a long time needs help.”
The rehabilitation unit normally features patients who are there for shorter stays of up to four weeks as they recover from things like strokes and fractures. From April 1, 2023 to this past March 31, the unit welcomed 52 inpatients.
Wood notes area residents are fortunate because “not every hospital has inpatient rehab. People don’t have to drive to Toronto.”
The hospital has four physical therapists who also cover the ICU and emergency departments along with two occupational therapists and a speech-language pathologist.
Getting back to Theo’s story and its happy ending, Wood fondly recalls his return to thank those who had cared for him just a few months earlier.
“His return was so moving,” Wood says. “And today, Theo has made an incredible recovery, living independently with his two cats, while pursuing his many hobbies and interests, including skateboarding.”
