Burke Rehabilitation Hospital Helps Man to Walk Again
Dec. 20 was a special day for 39-year-old Carmel resident Rusty Chmelovsky.
After months of rehabilitation Chmelovsky was able to be discharged from Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains and is able to walk for the first time since 2008 with the assistance of technology.
Chmelovsky, a 39-year-old Slovakian-born patient, was doing construction work nine years ago when he fell from the roof of a house approximately 32-feet high. The fall caused a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Following his accident Chmelovsky underwent various therapies, interventions and treatments at Burke Rehabilitation Hospital.
The work of Chmelovsky and the staff at Burke Rehabilitation received a boost from a ReWalk robotic exoskeleton device. He was the first patient discharged home in the region with the robotic device, according to the hospital.
ReWalk is a wearable exoskeleton that provides powered hip and knee motion to enable a person to stand upright, walk and turn. Chmelovsky demonstrated how the device helped him to walk again during a demonstration in the main lobby of the hospital’s Wood Building on Dec. 20.
In an interview Chmelovsky said, “I always thought there would be some way for me to walk again. This is amazing technology. It just feels great to stand again and just move around and walk.”
Following his walk through the lobby Chmelovsky said he was not in pain. “Since using ReWalk I can say that I don’t feel the pain but I feel more like a muscle ache, like when you’re going to the gym and working out and you’re starting to feel the muscles (ache). So for me it’s like a kind of good pain. It’s like more sensations coming in. I’m using some muscles I wasn’t using in a sitting position.”
Chmelovsky said he has been coming two or three times a week since July to work with the ReWalk technology as an outpatient.
Chmelovsky praised the staff at the hospital. “They are all professional, great. I love them,” he said. “They really know how to work out with you and they are helpful.”
Chmelovsky’s therapist, Glenda Rosado, was able to identify that he was a candidate for robotics. She worked on developing his upper body strength, flexibility and ability to stand upright.
“Working with Rusty over the past two years has been a transforming experience for both of us,” Rosado said. “We were able to improve his quality of life by changing his perspective from sitting in a chair looking up at the world to once again being able to stand and see it on his own two feet, something he had not been able to do in the last nine years”
“Rusty’s rehabilitation journey exemplifies Burke’s goal of getting patients back to their maximum level of recovery and independence,” Jeffrey Menkes, Burke’s president and CEO, said.
