Editors Note: When a new patient begins rehabilitation in an institution after a serious injury or illness, it can help to get to know a staff member who has gone through rehab. St. Lukes Rehabilitation Institute here employs a handful of people who are former rehab patients. Also, Chad Farrington, an alum of the institute and a frequent volunteer there, is a budding medical inventor. Here are three of their stories.





When Chad Farrington crashed his motorcycle on the night of July 3, 1989, his body came to rest 238 feet out from and 70 feet below the road up the Snake River from Lewiston, Idaho. His neck was broken in eight places.


I got hurt when I was 18, says Farrington, now 33. I was drinking and driving, and I was going way too fast.


Five years later, after additional surgery to remove bone splinters from his spinal cord, he came to St. Lukes for rehabilitation.


Now, when he visits the institute, as he does at least weekly, Farrington often will ask whether a patient would like to talk, but sometimes patients dont want to be around someone in a wheelchair. Theyll tell him, Im going to walk out of here. Hell respond, I hope you do, but right now youre in a wheelchair, and you need to stay in shape.


Farrington, who is lean and trim, says, If I didnt exercise, Id weigh 400 pounds, and then I wouldnt be able to transfer from his wheelchair to his car, bed, or shower.


A longtime sports nut, Farrington is so keenly interested in exercise that he designs medical devices to meet his own needs and to help other rehab patients work out. At the end of September, five of his devices were registered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Registration usually means that a device can be sold.


The devices include the Aqua Chair, a stabilizing unit for patients to use in a swimming pool; the Struoflex, which anchors exercise cord at any point on a bed; and the Quad Curl, which wheelchair users employ as they lift weights to exercise their arm muscles. He has yet to apply for patents on the other two devices.


Farringtons swimming-pool device swivels, is compact and lightweight, adjusts for people of different heights, and increases productivity, Farrington says. Now, you have to have one therapist per patient in the pool. With this, you could have one therapist for every two patients.


Gregory Paulus, owner of Metalite Industries Inc., of Spokane, which has manufactured Farringtons devices under contract, says he has enjoyed working with Farrington, whom he says is realistic enough to research what is already available in the marketplace and what isnt.


Farrington says he doesnt care whether he makes money from the devices. He has chosen a business name, Quadify This!, to market the devices, but says he might have to give his inventions away or risk losing his disability benefits.


Farrington, who has an apartment here, guides tours of high school and college students at St. Lukes and coaches wheelchair basketball for kids and makes appearances at schools to tell youngsters what can happen if they use alcohol or drugs.


Meanwhile, he continues to compete in sports. Hes been ranked among the top 40 of the U.S.s 700 wheelchair rugby players, has been invited to try out for the U.S. Olympic wheelchair rugby team, though he wasnt chosen for that squad and has played for wheelchair rugby teams in Phoenix and Portland, Ore.





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Victoria Christensen, one of St. Lukes four patient-care coordinators, came on board in late October. Twelve years ago, Christensen went through rehab at Harborview Hospital, in Seattle, after a car wreck in Port Townsend, Wash., left her with a spinal cord injury and unable to walk.


Christensen is a registered nurse, but says, Its not a secret that nurses dont care for people with disabilities in their profession. St. Lukes is more unique than not in hiring nurses with disabilities.


Nursing is one of the last of the medical professions to open its doors to disabled people, Christensen contends, adding, We have blind pharmacists. We have totally deaf surgeons.


Dorothy Detlor, dean of the Intercollegiate College of Nursing here, which Christensen attended, says, Victoria was the first student who was admitted to any nursing school in the country who was a paraplegic. There was some concern expressed by our faculty, and also by institutions where Christensen might train in a clinical setting. The institutions said they wouldnt jeopardize patient care, but in nursing many positions dont involve bedside care, and the institutions said they would work with ICN to help develop suitable curriculum, Detlor says.


She was a wonderful student, Detlor says of Christensen. It was a good learning experience for our faculty. I think it was a very positive experience for all of our agencies. I think it helped our students to work with people who have disabilities.


As a direct result of Christensens admittance, Chicago-based Rush University held a national seminar for nurse educators and others on how people with disabilities fit into nursing, Detlor says.


Christensen recalls that while she was in nurses school, one of her worst moments came when she was rolling her wheelchair down a hallway in a Spokane-area hospital while wearing her nurses uniform with a stethoscope around her neck. A hospital staff member asked her, Are you lost? Can I help you get back to your room?


As she dealt with her own rehabilitation years earlier, Christensen set a goalto travel in a van around the western half of the U.S. She was going to pitch a tent and camp out when she stopped, so she had to be able to get from the ground back up into her wheelchair. She attained that proficiency, then put 10,000 miles on her van in three months while traveling with Maverick, a yellow Labrador that knows his right from his left and how to open doors, push buttons, and get food for his master.


Before she was hurt, Christensen had been a behavioralist, working primarily with autistic people, but was preparing to begin a career as a grower of pheasant, grouse, and duck. They were going to be serving my pheasant under glass in New York, she says.


After her rehab at Harborview, Christensen attended WSU, earning a degree in biological sciences before going on to nursing school.


In her first job as a nurse, Christensen did case-management work with chronically mentally and medically ill people. Now, as a St. Lukes patient-care coordinator, Christensen assists with patients insurance, follows through on the meeting of goals, coordinates team meetings and family conferences, handles family crises, and audits charts.


Through her own experience in rehab, she knows that families can react with sadness, anger, or denial when a loved one suffers a permanent injury or a debilitating illness, and the sense of loss can be extreme. For example, a parent might not have the grandchildren they had hoped for, she says. I know where theyre coming from.


Its gratifying to her to help people out with some little daily things, Christensen says. When patients have questioned whether they could ever drive again, Ive put a couple of people in my van and said, Here, drive in the parking lot, she says.


The biggest thing, she says, is that people with disabilities get to do the things they want to do.


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When Monica Jordan received therapy at St. Lukes at age 13, I liked what they did, and it kind of opened up a realm for me that I was unaware of.


Born without a right forearm, Jordan had gotten a series of prosthetic arms at the Shriners Hospital when she was younger. Then, St. Lukes provided therapy to help her get used to a prosthetic arm that caused her to use her muscles independently rather than simultaneously. Now, Jordan is an exercise physiologist in St. Lukes cardiopulmonary rehab department, where she has worked for five years.


A year after Jordan received therapy at St. Lukes, she played volleyball as a freshman at Gonzaga Prep, but as her team squared off against its first opponent in the season championships, the referee called timeout, looked at her arm, said it could be a hazard to other players, and ruled that she couldnt play.


The ref didnt want me on the court, she says. I dont know if it was just different referees, or they were being more strict. It was completely ridiculous, is what it was, Jordan says.


Undaunted, Jordan found an occupational therapist at St. Lukes to make a cushioning device similar to the pads that football players must wear over prosthetic devices. Gary Smith, now the institutes chief operating officer, was the therapist.


Smith molded a plastic material that would slip over Jordans prosthetic arm, then put foam padding on the outside of the plastic sleeve.


Then, the referees said the device was so big that I had an unfair advantage, she remembers. She had to show that she could serve the ball without using the device and was told she couldnt use it to spike the ball at the net. Finally, she was allowed to play.


Also in her freshman year at Gonzaga Prep, Jordan played softball.


After high school, Jordan earned a bachelors in exercise science at Eastern Washington University. Before her last quarter of school, she interned in St. Lukes cardiopulmonary program, loved the work, and decided to enter that field.


Typically, Jordan will see a cardiac rehab patient or a pulmonary patient for 12 weeks and shell sometimes see a heart-transplant patient for a couple of years.


Shes passionate about her job. Its very rewarding to see people when theyre making such lifestyle choices to live more healthily, she says.


That Jordan underwent rehabilitation helps her connect with patients, although its just kind of one of those unspoken things, she says. Its not just myself, but also the other patients that serve as an example to incoming patients, she says.


When they come in, they dont know what to expect, she says. It helps to be able to relate to them and gain their confidence. In rehab, she says, attitude is everything.


Now 28, Jordan is expecting her first child.