Southern Ill. man learns to walk again at new rehab facility after months in hospital

HARRISBURG, Ill. (KFVS) - After spending more than three months in a hospital bed, a rehabilitation patient at Southern Illinois Healthcare is recovering one step at a time.

SIH recently opened a new rehab facility in Harrisburg, Ill. It is the only facility in Saline County that offers this particular safe patient mobility equipment. SIH made a $500,000 investment into the renovations of the facility, which is also home to SIH Urgent Care Harrisburg.

“I feel like there’s not too much I can’t accomplish,” said rehab patient Terry Horn.

Horn checked into the hospital last year with what he believed was gout. But after further tests, he learned it was kidney failure--a diagnosis that would leave him bedridden in the hospital for more than 130 days.

“I was to scared to try and get up on my own,” Horn said. “It felt like I would fall straight to the floor.”

It would take him more than a year to get up and moving again. And it’s all thanks to a machine called the Arjo Sara Plus.

“With that machine, you get strapped into it,” Horn said. “You’re not going to fall to the floor.”

Miles Vaughn has been a physical therapist at SIH for 15 years, and has been by Horn’s side for the majority of his rehab.

“To go from a year and a half without walking to using this machine--we didn’t know quite what to expect,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn shared how this machine helps patients like Horn.

“It’s a way to get patients from sitting to standing safely and then also kind of start to emulate the movements needed or necessary to start getting back to walking or feel like they’re walking.,” Vaughn said. “And then recruit those muscles that you can’t otherwise use with just sitting or laying on a mat.”

Horn has improved tremendously. Instead of using the Arjo Sara Plus machine, he is now using crutches to walk.

Horn says he is looking forward to getting back to normal activities.

“Just give it enough time and the more I work at it, the more I can do and hopefully I can just do anything I want to do any of these days,” Horn said.

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