Moving experiences in rehab

Henry Frosch put some shirts in the washing machine and walked slowly back to his bedroom. Another day, he might cook a meal, using the stove and refrigerator nearby.

Nothing is remarkable about these actions except that Mr. Frosch, 68, of Falls Church, was recovering from hip replacement surgery at Virginia Hospital Center’s acute rehabilitation facility, where performing such activities is part of therapy. The routine gets patients back on their feet in more ways than one.

Mr. Frosch had a walker for support, a therapist to monitor him, and three hours of physical therapy daily, but he was extremely cheerful under the circumstances. He had broken his right shoulder and hip in a fall off a curb three weeks earlier.

“I’m here for stupidity,” he volunteered genially and only half-jokingly. “I didn’t listen to my mother’s sound advice when I was a kid. She was always saying, ‘Watch where you are walking. You are going to trip and fall and hurt yourself.’”

He teared up only when his departure from the Arlington facility — scheduled to happen the next day, when friends were to pick him up and help him make the transition back to everyday life — was mentioned.

Mr. Frosch said he wouldn’t have minded staying in the hospital over the Christmas and New Year holidays. “The people are so wonderful here it wouldn’t be a punishment at all,” he said.

Leaving, he added, would be “kind of bittersweet.”

To date, the year-old rehab facility has served 200 patients suffering from serious injuries and operations that leave them incapacitated in some way and require continuity of care to help them recover. These are patients who have had bariatric surgery for morbid obesity or have suffered multiple fractures, brain injuries, spinal cord damage, strokes and other conditions that impair normal functioning.

The average stay is 10 or 11 days, says Cheryl Farmer, a physical therapist who is the facility’s program director, but it can range from five to 30 days, depending “on what insurance dictates.” A major advantage is access, she emphasizes.

“They come from this hospital or from outside, rather than having to go to a nursing facility in the area or an acute rehabilitation facility elsewhere.”

The center is unusual in having a kidney dialysis section on-site, and all 20 of its private rooms are full of daylight. Some of them are large enough for family members to stay the night in sleeper chairs. The staff encourages families to do this and often includes family members in patient treatment programs.

Compared with some other, larger rehab facilities around the country that have real cars and even real-life models of city streets, the hospital’s Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation Center does not have the most elaborate or imaginatively designed interior. However, it does have state-of-the-art equipment, attractive surroundings and a pleasant staff.

Several “graduates” who were interviewed suggested that staff attitude is the most crucial factor.

Sue Johnson, 42, of Springfield, another hip replacement veteran, was in the room next door to Mr. Frosch. She was getting ready to be discharged after what she felt had been a relatively short stay, given that she was returning home to a third-floor condo in a building without an elevator. Her parents had come from North Carolina to be with her a few days, staying nights in her condo.

During her time in rehab, she had learned to how to live independently — how to sit, how to stand “and not pop your hip out of place,” how to balance when brushing her teeth, how to put on socks and shoes, and how to wash the bottom of her feet using a long-handled sponge because bending over was a problem. Essential, too, was learning to walk up stairs. She had done twice the number necessary to reach her condo, she said proudly.

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