After breaking her leg in a biking accident just days before her 60th birthday, Lori Temple was determined to get the healing started immediately.
She had surgery at Desert Springs Hospital to help repair the damage and was thrilled to be able to move into the hospital’s Inpatient Rehabilitation Center for intensive therapy. “The people there took me into their arms,” she says. “It was really impactful what they did to help me get better.”
Temple has a busy career as chief information officer for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and she needed to learn how to tackle certain everyday tasks before she could return to her routine and her home. The staff picked up on her energy and tailored her care around what would work for her.
“It was very clear that the objective every day was to help patients get from where they were to the next step,” Temple recalls. “The compassionate, comprehensive care is amazing.”
During the week and a half she spent in the rehab center, she had a minimum of three hours of intensive therapy five days per week, and 24-hour nursing support to provide extra comfort and reassurance.
“I wasn’t able to put any weight at all on my foot,” she explains. In physical therapy, she did exercises to strengthen her arms and other muscles – the kinds of exercises that would make it possible for her to go home.
With help from occupational therapists, she was able to master personal tasks, like getting dressed and making her bed. Her spouse took pictures of their house, including their bathroom and hallways, so the rehab team could arrange for the equipment Temple would need when she went home.
“The home transition was amazing,” Temple says. “I could get dressed by myself, take a bath by myself, wheel around the house by myself.” She also began working from home as she continued exercises to support her ongoing recovery. “To be able to do all those things when I came home was so important.”
She’s tackled all of the hard work with a sense of humor and continues to be inspired when she thinks about her hospital team and the therapist who would push her to do “five more.”
“I couldn’t have been happier with the rehab center,” she says.