Patient Stories: Greer Tavel

As a personal motivation coach, Greer Tavel dedicated her work to helping people achieve their dreams. However, in April 2003, a massive stroke forced her to apply her strategies in a very real way to her own rehabilitation journey.

While getting ready for bed, Greer suddenly felt her left knee give out. A call to 911 led to admittance into the Evergreen Hospital Emergency Department, where she spent the next week in acute care as the medical staff worked to stabilize her condition. Once this was achieved, Greer's doctor recommended her to the University of Washington Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit, saying it had the best stroke rehabilitation program in the area. Greer accepted his suggestion and moved to the UW unit for a stay that would end up just one week shy of three months.

At first, Greer acknowledges, she was very depressed: She was completely paralyzed on the left side, without any sense of balance or a functioning bladder, she couldn't eat or swallow, and her family was 3000 miles away. Greer remembers finally telling the staff, “I don't want to be like this, I don't want to have a stroke. You're a nurse, fix me.” She felt alone and helpless, and didn't want to do anything for herself.

It was her nurse who forced Greer to start shifting her perspective; after two weeks of feeling despondent, Greer found herself confronted by the new nurse assigned to her case. Greer admits, “[She] began to quote to me from my latest Newsletter. I told her…I was thinking of people who had limiting thoughts, not…so much physical disability [from stroke].” The nurse asked Greer, “What's the difference?” and left. Upon her return, the nurse began to break down Greer's resistance, having her list tasks that Greer felt impossible, and then helping her accomplish every one. By the end of the day, Greer began to feel hope.

That interaction with her nurse set the tone for Greer's inpatient stay. Committed to treating the whole person, Greer's rehab team connected with her on a personal level. Her therapies were tailored not just to her physical needs and abilities, but also to her mental and emotional ones. The team knew how to relate to Greer to get the results needed for her to continue to get better; as Greer jokes, “Some days they pushed me to the point where I was totally uncomfortable and ready to kill them!”

Even as she came closer to leaving for home, Greer's team continued to encourage her in the skills needed to make the transition: to think ahead, to do things for herself, to manage her life as self-sufficiently as possible. When Greer was ready to leave the UWMC inpatient facility, she seriously considered entering an adult family home; instead, she took the advice of her rehab team, who, believing more in her abilities than she did herself, encouraged her to enter an assisted living facility where she would be more independent.

Now, Greer returns at least three times a week for outpatient therapy, and is active on the Rehabilitation Patient Advisory Council. As predicted by her physiatrist, Dr. Kathy Bell, at the beginning of her therapy, she is living in her own apartment and has her own car. No longer dependent on a walker, she currently uses a cane and is firmly dedicated to her goal walking without any assistive device. Whenever she attempts something she believes she won't be able to do, she remembers her nurse's words: "'Can't' is not on your website."

Greer's rehab team became her family during her stay in the UWMC inpatient facility. To this day, she considers them "the best rehab team in the country." Her only issue is her accent – after finally shedding it 30 years ago, she's had to come to terms with the fact that her New York accent is back to stay.

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