This remarkable journey shows why rehab is vital to recovery

Karl Goldbeck was used to running into burning buildings. A 20-year veteran of the Onalaska Fire Department, he says he didn’t think twice before risking his life in a dangerous situation. That all changed when he faced his own mortality last year. While on a family vacation in Louisiana, Karl was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition in which a person's immune system attacks the peripheral nerves. In one week, Karl went from experiencing tingling in his hands to being completely paralyzed and on a ventilator. 

‘If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything’

The husband and dad of three sons said, “I experienced firsthand that if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. Mortality hits different now. I want to be here for a long time.” 

Karl spent 21 days in the neuro-ICU in New Orleans until a medical team was able to fly him to home to Wisconsin, where he spent 2.5 months at Gundersen Health System on a ventilator, paralyzed and unable to speak. He communicated by blinking to indicate letters and spell words as his wife Pam recited the alphabet (two blinks meant he wanted a kiss).

“The day I came off the ventilator was the same day I started going to rehab. That’s when the hard work began,” Karl, 50, said. 

Karl had to relearn how to walk, talk, eat and drink. All of that happened in inpatient rehab, a program that was founded 50 years earlier by Neal Taylor, MD.

“We focus on how patients can have a meaningful existence’

The (now retired) 90-year-old founding member of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at then-Gundersen Clinic recognized the importance of rehabilitation after an injury or illness. His brother died of polio at 23 and his brother’s son was paralyzed with the disease at nine months old.

In 1975, Dr. Taylor was quoted as saying, “The team empowers our patients to be as independent as possible after an accident or illness has left them impaired.” He described inpatient rehab as “different from the rest of the hospital. In the other areas of the hospital when you get sick, you expect to get waited on. In rehab, we expect people to wait on themselves.” 

When Karl started rehab, he could only slightly move his right arm. With the help of his team, he progressed to using an electric wheelchair, walker, a walking stick and now can walk independently. He still has no feeling in his face, hands or feet, but doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

“We didn’t really look at what people lost,” Dr. Taylor, who still lives in La Crosse, said during a recent interview. “We looked at what they had left and how they could work with that to have a meaningful existence.” 

‘We impact people who’ve been through hard things’

Dr. Taylor’s nephew who contracted polio as a baby now walks with crutches and develops orthopedic braces to help people heal and become stronger. And Karl, who, due to his long illness, was forced to leave his work at a private equity firm, spends his time mentoring others who are recovering from illness or injury. And he’s training for a 5K.

“Stories like Karl’s get to the heart of why we do what we do,” said Deb Head, an occupational therapist-turned program manager in inpatient rehab. “We can have an impact on the lives of people who’ve been through really hard things.”