Guided by Angels
By Jesse Lee
Jeannie Vodnik’s sweet smile lights up the room when she sees her two physical therapists, Dr. Kim DeChant, H Sci ’05, PT ’07, and Dr. Tina Stoeckmann, enter and greet her. DeChant and Stoeckmann sport identical golden angel pins — gifts from Jeannie and her husband, Tony — because Jeannie calls the two therapists “angels on her shoulder.”
“I first met Jeannie and Tony through (physical therapy chair and associate professor) Dr. Allie Hyngstrom,” says Stoeckmann, clinical professor and director of the Neurologic Residency Program in the Physical Therapy Department. “Jeannie had a very tragic stroke, and Tony had been searching everywhere — he’s such a devoted husband — for someplace to help Jeannie.”
Standard teaching years ago was that, following a brain injury or spinal cord injury, neurons are dead. People with those injuries were taught how to compensate for the damage — they had to learn new ways to do old tasks, if possible, or they had to abandon some of the old ways of doing things. They may use a brace to substitute for muscles that no longer work, for example.
In the past decade, however, neuroscience research has shown that intensive training can change activation of the surviving neurons in the nervous system — a process known as neuroplasticity — accomplished through specific, repetitive training regimens.
“Through years of neuroscientific research, we understand that the nervous system is plastic and that further functional advances can be attained through repeated, rehabilitative exercise and activity,” says
Dr. William E. Cullinan, dean of the College of Health Sciences and director of the Integrative Neuroscience Research Center at Marquette.
Tony and Jeannie found a clinic
in Alabama that specialized in this type of intensive neurologic therapy that could help Jeannie regain some movement and ability, but unfortunately Jeannie didn’t meet the strict criteria for admittance. They reached out to Hyngstrom, who had seen Jeannie previously as part of a research study for people who’d had a stroke, and asked Hyngstrom to work with Jeannie to gain enough key activities to allow her to join the specialized clinic program.
Hyngstrom then brought in Stoeckmann to do some work with Jeannie in the hopes that Jeannie would gain enough of the abilities needed to be a clinic candidate, but despite their hard work, Jeannie still didn’t get accepted.
The Vodniks didn’t give up. It took some time, but Jeannie eventually got into the clinic program in Alabama. But despite that, Tony challenged Stoeckmann to consider what it would take to open a clinic at Marquette that could provide specialized neurologic physical therapy to people with stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and other neurologic conditions. There were only one or two such clinics in the Midwest at the time, and none in Wisconsin.
“Tony is a businessman, and he made me look at the financial side of what it would take to open a clinic,” Stoeckmann says. “He was the first person to make us sit down and actually think about how we could not only make a clinic happen, but how we can make it affordable and available.”
In 2016 Stoeckmann teamed up with Dr. Jeff Wilkens, Arts ’97, PT ’99, director of the Marquette Physical Therapy Clinic, to put together a business proposal for a neurologic therapy clinic.
“Jeff had already established an amazing sports medicine clinic at Marquette that has been extremely successful,” Hyngstrom says. “And we’ve seen how that clinic meets the needs of patients but also of our students, who have access to a place for more hands-on learning right here on campus.”
“The original physical therapy clinic started in 2011, and after about two years of getting it up and running, we started talking about how we could expand it,” Wilkens says. “Neurologic therapy was one of the first ideas that came to the forefront. We really settled quickly on neuro because Tina and I really hit it off and knew it would be a good partnership.”
“Our research strengths in the department are neuroscience-based,” Hyngstrom says. “So it seemed like it would be a natural avenue to open a clinic that could also work in tandem with our research focus.”
Stoeckmann and Wilkens reached out to DeChant, Stoeckmann’s former student at Marquette, who was then working at the VA hospital in Milwaukee as a physical therapist.
“Tina and I used to dream about offering neurologic therapy services of this kind,” DeChant says. “We formed a friendship after I graduated, and we never stopped talking about that dream.”
Stoeckmann and Wilkens asked to bounce some ideas off of DeChant in order to help flesh out their clinic proposal. They received $50,000 from an anonymous donor and a matching grant of $50,000 from the College of Health Sciences in 2016, but it wasn’t enough to get a full-fledged clinic operational.
Stoeckmann kept teaching and working with students and patients, and Wilkens kept growing the physical therapy clinic, but the idea of a neurologic rehab clinic was never far from their minds.
“We kept getting calls at the physical therapy clinic from people saying ‘I have this,’ or ‘my mom has that’ — specific neurologic conditions that, at the time, we weren’t equipped to handle,” Wilkens says. “Tina is so passionate about neuro rehab that she would start taking on a few clients who needed care, and it kept fueling the conversation of all the people out there just looking for the next step beyond traditional neurological rehab. That kept motivating us — the more calls we would get, the more leads, the more inquiries, they kept fueling the fire of a need for this type of specialized clinic.”
Much like the repetition and intensity necessary for neurological recovery, Stoeckmann, Wilkens, Hyngstrom and others in the college, including the dean, focused their energies on solving the problem of finding the funding and space needed to make the clinic a reality.
Their persistence paid off. In December 2018 the college received a $1 million gift from the same anonymous donor who provided the initial $50,000 back in 2016. The gift would officially establish the Marquette Neuro Recovery Clinic.
The gift allowed for immediate work to begin on renovating space on the first floor of Cramer Hall, as well as the purchase of high-end, specialized equipment for the clinic.
“Put simply, this clinic would not be possible without the generosity of this donor,” Cullinan says. “The college has a long history of friendship and patronage with this person, and with their help we’re committed to building a state-of-the-art training center that will provide intensive programming for people living with life-altering brain and spinal cord injuries and illnesses.”
“There’s been a lot of thoughtful planning on how the space will be used and the atmosphere we want to create,” Hyngstrom says. “It’s in a great location to optimize entry for patients as they come to the clinic. It’s just been a very intentionally planned place, because environment does matter — the state-of-the-art equipment we’ve been able to purchase because of this gift will help elevate the treatment we can offer.”
Having the right person to lead the clinic was another key consideration. DeChant was hired as the Marquette Neuro Recovery Clinic coordinator, reuniting her as a colleague with Stoeckmann and allowing them to realize the dream they had put forward years before.
In the announcement of the gift, the donor said, “Learning of the limitations of insurance coverage and the importance of continued intensive therapy to recovery for those impacted by neurological injury made me realize how important and great the need is for a clinic like this. I am pleased to help Marquette bring these life-changing therapies to the many in need.”
According to DeChant, the clinic, which will be one of the only clinics of its kind in the Midwest, will be modeled on NeuroRecovery Network® programs originally developed by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to a team of specialized therapists, the clinic is outfitted with state-of-the-art technology, including zero-gravity ambulation stations, upper extremity robotics and a virtual-reality-based vestibular rehabilitation device, among other items.
“We’re focused on covering all aspects of traditional, intensive and wellness training,” DeChant says.
While DeChant likens the wellness training to seeing a personal trainer, she says that limitations of insurance coverage, especially for the intensive program, is an important factor that must be addressed.
“An intensive program is typically three hours per day, four to five days a week, for eight to twelve weeks,” DeChant says. “A program like that can cost as much as $15,000.”
The college hopes that the creation of the clinic will inspire other donors to come forth and set up scholarships or fee deferrals to help people with hardships afford the care they need.
The cost of the program takes into account its intensive nature, with people in the program benefiting from multiple skilled practitioners working with them in sessions that would be impossible in a typical outpatient setting.
“In the clinic, you may practice a therapy as much as possible in a 45-minute session and then send the person home with a home exercise plan,” DeChant says. “But there are studies that show that, in a typical therapy session, someone may practice a specific therapeutic movement 20 times. From a neuroplasticity standpoint, we need to see them practicing that same movement 500 times in a series of specific, intensive sessions.”
And while it seems like a massive investment of time, training and cost, DeChant says the payoff is worth it.
“We’re harnessing recovery,” she says. “How you functioned the day before your injury is our goal — so if you go through the 12-week program and can walk without a walker afterward, you should be able to continue doing that without reverting back.”
DeChant wears a bracelet engraved with a single word: legacy. “I’m always thinking about how I can leave a legacy,” she says. “Whenever I make decisions in my life, I think about where I can make the most impact on people. I’m excited to open this clinic and start working with patients. It’s something I’m proud to be a part of.”
Read more about the College of Health Sciences at Marquette in the newest issue of the College of Health Sciences Magazine:
