By Leigh Ann McDonald: For FirstHealth of the Carolinas

The two things 63-year-old Jerry Meacham wanted to do during his retirement years were golf and fish.

After a severe injury to his right hand, he feared those pastimes would be lost forever.

But today, after six months of occupational therapy at one of FirstHealth’s Centers for Reha-bilitation, combined with a lot of dedication, hard work, pain and cursing, this retired military man is moving full force into spring: planting azaleas, sawing down trees and, most importantly, golfing and fishing.

Meacham gives the credit for this recovery to his occupational therapy rehabilitation program.

“I have cried, screamed, hollered and kicked, and all of them were great at Aviemore rehab,” he said. “They listened to my jokes and listened to my tales. Randi (his primary therapist) put up with everything.”

But Randi Laws, registered occupational, credits Meacham’s ultimate success to his dedication to therapy.

“He would come in here and work endless hours and do everything we asked him to do,” she says. “That is truly what got him back to fishing and golfing and doing what he wanted to do.”

In July 2003, Meacham suffered what is known as a Colles fracture of the wrist, a fracture that occurs when a person falls on an outstretched hand.

“I was in Oregon visiting my daughter and stepped off the back of my truck and landed in the middle of the road on my right arm,” Meacham said. “I must have been trying to break my fall.”

Meacham’s wrist was placed in a cast while he was in Oregon. He did not tolerate the cast well, however; and it appeared to be cutting off his circulation.

Once he returned to North Carolina, Meacham quickly set up an appointment with a local orthopaedic surgeon.

“I was sitting in Pinehurst begging and crying for them to cut the cast off because it hurt so bad,” Meacham said.

Meacham was downhearted, because he had been told in Oregon that he would probably not regain the use of his fingers.

“The doctor told me that most people my age would end up with a claw,” he said.

But things were about to change. The orthopaedic surgeon removed the cast, put Meacham’s wrist in a swimmer’s cast and referred him to occupational therapy for splinting and therapy.

Occupational therapy is skilled treatment that helps individuals achieve independence in all facets of their lives. Occupational therapists are professionals whose education includes the study of human growth and development with specific emphasis on the social, emotional and physiological effects of illness and injury.

“In general, occupational therapists will work on the activities of daily living — bathing, dressing, grooming, etc. — and physical therapists will focus on mobility tasks,” Laws said. “In our clinic here, the occupational therapists see and specialize in the hand and wrist patients.”

When Meacham’s cast was removed, he couldn’t move his hand at all.

“We had a long road ahead of us,” Laws said. “We started out with splinting just to get his wrist back to a neutral position so we could work on some functional tasks.”

Splinting involves the use of thermoplastic material that responds to heat. Therapists mold the material to the patient’s hand and change it from visit to visit to put the wrist in a different position.

It took about a month of therapy before Laws was even able to measure Meacham’s grip strength, and it started out at just 10 pounds.

“Average grip strength for him would probably be around 70 pounds,” Laws said. “I knew that he would be able to fish and golf again, but I didn’t know if he would be able to do it as quickly as he wanted.”

Laws soon found out that she had an extremely motivated patient on her hands.

“If I told Jerry to go home and do 10 repetitions of an exercise, he would go home and do 110, so we had to pull back the reins quite a bit,” she said.

Meacham laughs as he explains the rationale behind his overachievement.

“In the military, you would try to excel, but I was doing it wrong,” he said. “I never gave it a chance to heal or the swelling to go down. It took me probably a couple or three weeks before it got through that more wasn’t better.”

Once he gained some patience, Meacham’s persistence during his six months of therapy paid off.

“If you are that dedicated to your therapy, there is no holding you back,” Laws said. “You can come to therapy two or three times a week, but if you’re not doing your home exercise program and your homework, then you’re not going to maximize your function or meet your full goals and potential.

“With Jerry, we were the guides, telling him what to do and how to do it and where to go to get there. But his motivation and dedication is what got him where he wanted to get.”

Meacham advises that anyone in therapy should stay with it in order to succeed.

“I never missed one appointment except when it snowed, but I saw a lot of people come and go, and they would call in and say they were missing their appointment for some reason or another,” he said. “You get out of something what you put into it, and if you listen to the therapists and pay attention, they will fix you. Thank God for all of them.”

Meacham’s therapy ended in February 2004, and he said he continues to work on making his hand stronger.

“I really concentrate on using it: opening doors, opening cans — you’d be surprised what you can’t do with an injured wrist,” he said. “Now I can button my britches. I can do everything.”

And what about that fishing and golfing?

“I’ve been fishing three or four times and casting with my right hand,” he said. “And I’ve been hitting golf balls. I was an avid golfer who shot in the 70s. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do now, but I can hit the ball — I know that.”