For Beth Buehner, farming isn’t just her livelihood; it’s her passion. She gets up before the crack of dawn to head to her job at a pig farm in rural Nebraska. When she gets off work, she comes home to her family’s farm in Eustis, Nebraska, where they raise cattle. But for the last five months, instead of helping with the calving season and taking cows to auction, Beth has been recovering from a serious car accident.
“I had a head-on collision with my son-in-law on a snowy day and ended up with a lot of internal injuries, broke my arm in three places, but we’re ok,” Beth said. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just a snowy day that we met on the crest of a hill.”
After three months at Nebraska Medical Center, Beth came to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals ready to get to work.
“She told me from day one she wanted to get back to her pig farm and to her cows,” Kayleigh Schmidt, OTD, OTR/L, a Madonna occupational therapist, said. “I knew we had to find ways to incorporate that and give her that extra motivation.”
When Beth started in Madonna’s Specialty Hospital, she was weak and unable to move her left side. Once she was medically stable, gradual increases in therapy led to Beth progressing to Madonna’s Acute Rehabilitation Hospital, where she continued to build her strength, balance and stamina. Her physician-led care team worked with her daily to set and achieve goals along her rehabilitation journey, incorporating her passion into everything she did.
“Every day, we tied what we were doing to how it would help her when she’s back on the farm,” Schmidt said. “She knew in her head, ‘I need to be able to be able to get my work boots on. I need to be able to stand for long periods of time. I need to be able to use my hand to hold down the pig.’”
In a few weeks, Beth went from being unable to stand for 10 seconds to standing and walking for 10 minutes at a time. With physical therapy, she mastered steering her walker over grass, gravel and any uneven terrain she may encounter on the farm. Specialized technology like the ArmeoSpring robotic arm increased her range of motion on her left side, something she needs to brush and feed her cattle.
“I feel like because she’s a farm girl, Beth is extremely self-disciplined,” Schmidt said. “She was always so ready to go. ‘What can I do next? What can I do better? Challenge me.’”
For her final therapy as a Madonna patient, Schmidt crafted an outing for Beth that offered the chance to practice everything she worked so hard to achieve over the last few months.
“We were able to go to a farm in Ashland and she finally got to put together all the pieces she’s been working on here at Madonna and put it to the test,” Schmidt said. “Her face lit up being able to see the horses and be able to interact with the animals. She kept saying, ‘I feel so happy. I feel so at peace because this is home to me.’
“It felt really, really good to be on the farm and take in that fresh air,” Beth said. “I know I can go home, and many thanks to everybody at the hospital because without them I could’ve never done what I did.”
In true farm-girl fashion, Beth is eager to return to her farm and pick up right where she left off, but she won’t forget the people who helped her regain her independence.
“I’m ready to go home and take care of my cows, but it’s going to be bittersweet because it’s like leaving a family here at Madonna,” she said.