At 56 years old, Aubrey “Dale” Knox never expected that he’d have to learn how to walk and talk again.
But when Knox, a truck driver from East Springfield, Pennsylvania, was injured in a September 2012 car accident and rushed to an area hospital where he remained in coma for two days, he woke to find that had suffered a severe concussion, spinal cord injury and paralysis.
It was then that Knox first learned he might never walk again.
After an inpatient stay at a regional acute hospital, he came to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Erie.
For more than a month, Knox underwent specialized occupational, physical, and speech therapy, little by little working to regain his motor and sensory skills. Then, after undergoing surgery on his neck to treat his spinal cord, he returned for a three-week stay at HealthSouth to continue his rehabilitation.
“I went from no feeling in my hands or feet to walking,” Knox says. “The day before yesterday when I took my first step without holding on to the walker, it’s just like somebody gave me a new life.”
Knox describes his recovery experience at HealthSouth as “second to none.” “I’ve got a lot of motivation and the therapy here has helped me with that motivation. They push you that little bit extra,” he notes, “and that’s the reason I’m walking out those doors today.”
