The Revamp Comprehensive Rehabilitation Centre at 17 Latham Avenue has all the services that someone who has lost mobility or a limb would need to become a 'functionally independent' individual. - Winston Sill/ Freelance Photographer

Many persons become doctors because they like helping people. Dr Karen Phillips is no different. "It's very rewarding being a doctor. I like helping people, though it sounds cliché. When I got my first pay cheque during internship I thought, 'someone is paying me for this?"

However, after 14 years as a physician, specialising in diabetes and endocrinology, she has added a new experience to her medical career. About a month ago, she opened the Revamp Comprehensive Rehabilitation Centre located at 17 Latham Avenue in St Andrew. The centre offers comprehensive rehabilitation for patients who may have had a stroke, back injuries, suffer from arthritis, need speech therapy, reflexology, require treatment to burn injuries on their hands, sports rehabilitation and the elderly who have fractured a hip.

Giving patients hope

As a physician working in her area of specialisation, Dr Phillips saw numerous patients who have suffered strokes. "I saw a lot of patients with stroke and it's like your life is over, losing motion, losing a limb. Some are relatively young and they become bedridden, and it doesn't have to be so."

"My mother suffered one stroke and then another and it just brought home the need for this kind of centre, where we don't have many options here (in Jamaica). (We offer) speech therapy, occupational therapy all under one roof modelled off a first-world type of facility." This became a reality and, so far, the response has been very encouraging.

"It's very gratifying to see these patients regain function and become independent individuals."

Dr Karen Phillips finds the positive in any negative situation.

Dr Phillips notes that the increase in the number of young persons in their late 30s and 40s having strokes can be attributed to a stressful lifestyle. The risk factors for a stroke, she points out are hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol or sickle cell disease.

Depression

She notes that losing mobility or a limb can lead to depression, not only for the patient, but for their caregivers, and so counselling is one of the services offered at the centre. "The family is incorporated. We do home assessment and teach the family how to move them (and) bathe them. Occupational therapy deals with the functional side of rehabilitation - functioning again, adopting to the loss of a limb. Rehabilitation is not just physical, it has an emotional side and, sometimes, it's easier to deal with the physical side, that shows more; sometimes it's hard to access the emotional side.

She notes that some patients do recover and become able to drive a car or use a computer.

"The success is dependent on how early treatment is administered and how aggressively," notes Dr Phillips. She continued, "We can't prevent it, but when it happens, I should be in a position to offer them hope. It's very rewarding."

Dr Phillips not only treats her patients, she becomes their friend. "I've made friends with some of my patients and see some of them become very functional individuals." Unfortunately, there are some of her friends who don't recover. "It's difficult. I go to the funerals and it's not easy, especially when they are young and, sometimes, I have to go through my phone and delete their numbers. It takes a particular type of person to do this." Dr Phillips is that type of person. "I'm an optimist. In every negative, I see a positive. It's my personality. I hate feeling sad. I always find something to be happy about."