Inspired to Help Others Walk Again: Patient Becomes Team Member

The road to Ben Barbee’s new job as a rehab tech started with a short drive to see a friend. That was back in March; he never made it to the friend’s house.

A car accident nearly took his life. He was unresponsive at the scene and spent three weeks in a coma. The extent of his serious brain injury would not be known until he regained consciousness. “My brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen and I wasn’t supposed to walk or talk again,” Ben said.

When he started rousing from coma, he was disoriented and pulled the IVs out of his arms. Then he remembers waking up, not able to move or feel his hands that had been restrained to the bed. “I asked the nurse watching me, ‘Do I have hands?’”

He spent another week in a stepdown unit before transferring to VCU Health Department of PM&R to begin inpatient rehabilitation learning to use his body again. Like other patients in those early days of COVID-19, he was doing this without the physical presence of family and friends. Visitors weren’t allowed, so the recreation therapists helped him use FaceTime to connect with family.

During his two and a half weeks in PM&R, he worked to overcome a stutter he didn’t have before the accident and learned to walk again.

“Learning to walk again was the best feeling I ever had,” Ben said about the experience that inspired his next career move. “I wanted to give that feeling to somebody else!”

During the next step in his recovery, outpatient treatment at Sheltering Arms Bon Air, he learned about Sheltering Arms Institute and the open positions that could help him achieve his goal.

“Nowadays I find happiness in serving another person,” Ben said about his new job, which is a departure from his previous jobs selling residential solar panels and as a soldier in the U.S. Army. “When I am walking by a patient’s room and I see a dinner tray, I step in, introduce myself, and clear the tray. I really act like, ‘If I was in their shoes – like I was 3 months ago – I would want that dirty tray out of my room.’”

Only a few weeks into his new job and he’s already had a taste of his dream as he helps people use equipment like the Hocoma Andago and Bioness Vector.

“The feeling is indescribable to be honest,” Ben said. “Especially when we set up the mirror in front of them and they can see themselves walk again. I got pretty close with this one patient and his family. A few times while watching him walk again, we both kind of shed a tear – before a smile of course!”