Sydney Brincks is a busy mom. While raising two kids with her husband, the 24-year-old also helps tend to 11 goats and “a bunch of chickens” on her hobby farm in Waucoma, Iowa. So, after suffering an injury that nearly cost her the use of her right hand, Sydney knew she needed to work hard to get back to where she once was so she could get back to her life.
Thanks to the care team at Gundersen Palmer Rehab Visions, what could’ve been a life-altering incident is instead a fraught story Sydney can look back on and realize that, despite how unlucky she was that day, she did what she needed to do – for herself and her family.
A troubled ride
Sydney was attending the birthday party of a friend in June 2022 when a group decided to take a ride on a UTV. Thinking nothing of it, she got in the passenger seat, and they started down the shoulder of a state highway. At one point, though, the driver lost control of the vehicle and it overturned into the ditch, and Sydney took the brunt of the impact.
“After I came to, I realized that something wasn’t right,” she says. “I looked down at my hand, and it was off, hanging on just by a bit.”
Thanks to her time working as a CNA, Sydney knew she needed to stabilize her hand as best she could, so she held it with her left arm – which happened to be broken – and tried to remain calm while waiting for help to arrive. She knew the more she could share with paramedics, the more they’d be able to help her.
Sydney was taken to the nearest hospital, then transferred to the University of Iowa, where surgeons were able to reattach her hand and treat her broken arm. Though the hand was saved, it was nearly nonfunctional, so Sydney faced the prospect of a long rehabilitation process, which she turned to Gundersen Palmer Lutheran Hospital and Clinics for.
“It was an emotional process, but it was also comforting knowing I could do it so close to home,” she says.
The road to recovery
Not knowing how much function Sydney would get back in her hand was the hardest part, and that question loomed over the entire eight-month process. But she knew if she wanted any chance of it working, she’d have to put in the effort. So, she started rehab three days a week, doing small, simple things.
“They worked with me through everything: the tears, the anger, the smallest accomplishments that I didn’t think I’d be able to do,” Sydney says. “They cheered me on like I just finished a marathon.”
Eventually, Sydney made it down to just one day of rehab a week, and this past June, she finished off the program.
“It’s functioning better than we all thought it was going to,” she says about the use of her hand now, adding that her kids were her motivation. “I have a one-and-a-half and a five-year-old, so I went in every day, and I was like, ‘I need to get as close to full functioning as possible.’”
The accident wasn’t her fault, but it happened nonetheless, and Sydney wanted to show her children you need to forget about the reason, put your head down and focus on what’s important – the recovery process.
“It was the most important thing to me,” she says of her recovery. “I have two young kids, and they needed their mom.”
Palmer stood by her side
Sydney said the care team at Palmer Rehab Visions felt like a family away from home. They encouraged her when she needed it most, listened to the issues she was having and helped her work through the emotional scaring.
“I told them what I wanted, and they’re like, ‘Alright, let’s get you there,’” she says. “They’d give me a realistic outlook. It was something that I needed in that time.”
Gundersen Palmer occupational therapist Steffany Sass credited Sydney for her hard work and dedication to regaining the use of her hand.
“Sydney was the best patient. She would always do her exercises at home and was very motivated to get better,” Sass says. “At first, stretching and exercises were painful, but she powered through. When we first started therapy, she really wasn’t using the right hand for functional activities.
Sydney asked Sass to write down her measurements so she could have them at home to track her progress and use them as motivation to keep working hard.
“Sydney was always determined to work hard and was diligent with coming to therapy and doing her exercises at home,” Sass says. “She found ways to replicate exercises at home to continue her progress.”
Despite the small, but positive, steps, there were days when Sydney wanted to give up. But then she’d get home and spend time with her family, and that reminded her why she was grinding it out.
“It was 100 percent worth it,” she says of the work. “I feel very accomplished. I had the best family cheering me on. … It was an emotional, frustrating, but rewarding process.”