Stroke recovery's not like getting over the flu.
You don't sit around and wait to get better.
You have to work and challenge yourself all the time.
That's my goal; I want to go back to normal life.
I remember this one physical therapist telling me,
"You know, Mark, you need to train like you're training
for the Olympics."
Henry Kaiser's son Henry Jr. was diagnosed with
multiple sclerosis in 1945.
At that time, MS was considered a fatal and hopeless disease
and Henry Sr. looked for the best hope he could find.
Kaiser was a man of action building highways, dams, ships -
always viewing, in his words,
"problems as opportunities in work clothes."
When he read that an extraordinary team in
Washington DC, Dr. Herman Kabat and physical therapist
Maggie Knott, were using innovative approaches for
individuals with multiple sclerosis and other disabling
diseases, he immediately wanted to know more.
He asked Sidney Garfield, the physician with whom he
co-founded Kaiser Permanente, to investigate.
Dr. Kabat was using a new medication --
it wasn't a new medication.
The medication that had been used for a long time
called "prostigmine."
It had been used for other purposes,
but he was using it on multiple sclerosis patients.
It relaxed their spasm so they were able to move.
Kabat and Knott also developed a new philosophy of practice and
technique in physical therapy.
Early after the diagnosis, they would use the techniques
to facilitate movement and improve function.
He had people walking who hadn't walked for years.
Garfield put Henry Kaiser Jr. in the care of Herman Kabat
and Maggie Knott, and Henry Jr. began steadily improving.
Garfield was so impressed, he sent several of his physicians
to learn more about the work Kabat was doing.
They spent six months with Kabat and then reported to me
that the work was really worthwhile,
that he was doing a lot of good for these people.
I decided to sponsor Kabat, bring him into our operations.
And that's how the Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation
Center, first known as the Kabat-Kaiser Institute
in Vallejo, California was born.
I feel a very strong connection to Dr. Kabat and Maggie Knott
because their priorities and their focus are very similar
to mine and to the center's at this point in time,
60 years later.
Dr. Kabat had a different approach to patients who had
been diagnosed with disabling conditions, children and adults.
Before the advent of rehabilitation medicine,
the view was that these people should be confined to bed or
confined to a wheelchair and that there was really no hope
for their recovery.
So Dr. Kabat's approach, Maggie Knott's approach,
looking at patients' strengths and helping them to
compensate for the impairments as well as promoting the
recovery of function through a scientifically-based
principled practice was really, really a revolutionary idea.
Our whole theory is one of maximum resistance,
manual maximum resistance.
We must get the patient to do as much as he possibly can through
whatever range of motion he can participate.
Well, certainly Maggie's functional approach was based,
very strongly based in Dr. Kabat's philosophical and
scientific approach, which was building rudimentary function
and then developing even more sophisticated function.
Dr. Kabat's and Maggie Knott's outcomes really proved what we
now today would say is the science of neuroplasticity.
That is understanding that the brain has a great capacity
to reorganize; I suppose we could say rewire itself.
An early group of patients treated at the
Rehabilitation Center were severely injured coal miners
from Appalachia brought to California by rail under
special arrangement with the United Mine Workers Union.
In Oakland, caravans of ambulances awaited
and Dr. Kabat welcomed some of the first.
Prior to rehab, these individuals had no hope for
participating in life's many activities.
Eventually, many of them were able to get back home
to fulfilling activities in every sector of life.
Soon, patients with multiple sclerosis and mining injuries
were joined by patients with a history of polio
and other disabling illnesses and injuries.
The program spread worldwide through clinical practice,
training and research.
It was known as The Kabat Method and
Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation or PNF.
Since 1947, KFRC has treated thousands of patients with
acquired neurological disorders, trauma, neuromuscular
and orthopedic conditions.
One of the United Mine Workers, Harold Willson,
had injured his spinal cord at age 21 in a mine cave in
that resulted in paraplegia.
He became one of the first in a long line of spirited
Vallejo patients to demonstrate what could be done
once their rehabilitation was complete.
After his time at the KFRC, Harold earned a degree in
accounting and went to work for Kaiser Permanente as a
financial analyst.
When the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was being planned,
he waged an almost single-handed campaign and used his financial
expertise to help make BART the first handicapped-accessible
train system in the world.
Shelley Bickoff, seen receiving therapy in 1950,
was an avid tennis player when she contracted polio and was at
the Kabat-Kaiser Institute at the same time as the miners.
Now I think it's remarkable that I reached a stage
where I was stable and that I could actually stand on a court
and turn around and do a backhand.
This is the way I did a serve, although I have no arm.
I would throw it up with this hand and come down like that.
Kevin Ngo had a stroke when exercising on a treadmill.
When this interview took place, he had been at the KFRC
for only a week but was regaining function.
You're going to walk...
They push me on a high level and try to make me get
better, better.
I see I can improve a lot.
Mark Wellman started mountaineering as a teenager.
In 1982, he was 22 years old and climbing a mountain in a
remote part of the California's Sierra Nevada.
He fell one hundred feet and sustained an injury to his
spinal cord that resulted in paraplegia.
I wouldn't be doing what I've done in the last 25 years
if I didn't go through physical rehabilitation.
I really attribute that to my success today from what I've
accomplished in the last 20 - 25 years:
climbing El Capitan twice, spending 13 days on Half Dome.
What happened to me was a really negative thing at the time,
a fate worse than death.
Turning that around into something positive -
I mean, now I make my living as a speaker,
an outdoor adventurer, equipment designer,
do some film production work.
You know, I took this tragedy and turned it into
something very positive.
After working in the business world while raising her family,
artist Allison Shapiro had landed a dream-come-true job
illustrating a children's book.
Just as she started the project, she experienced two brainstem
strokes in a 24-hour period, resulting in loss of
motor control, slurred speech and blurred vision.
But while at the KFRC, she attempted to draw.
And this was the best that I could draw.
When I did this, I cried.
I had no idea if I'd ever be able to paint again
or finish that book.
After months of hard work, Allison regained her
fine motor control, created some sample drawings
and convinced the publisher and author to allow her to
finish illustrating the book.
In my personal experience of regaining function,
the most important thing for me to remember is that the brain
is very plastic and it's able to rewire itself in ways that
we really don't understand.
Every day, every week, I'm seeing patients who come in with
catastrophic events that really change their lives forever.
And instead of that being a hopeless situation,
there is reason for hopefulness and people can improve,
and they improve because of the scientific basis of what we do
and of the persistence of continuing to provide therapy.
The approaches of Dr. Kabat and Maggie Knott are the same
approaches we're using today, and we are having the same
excellent outcomes, and that's what's really gratifying
about working here.
I expected that rehab would fix me.
What I learned was that rehab would teach me
how to fix myself.
And that's what's worth celebrating.
♪♪