ASHLAND — With heart, patience, determination, and love, Kingston of Ashland’s Greg Lynn accomplished what he set out to do.
After almost 200 days at KOA and three months in the hospital before that. Lynn is thriving, graduating from KOA, and heading home.
On May 2, 2016 Lynn entered the therapy gym for the last time but this time it was not to work on the next physical task he needed to overcome. This time he entered the gym through a tunnel of KOA employee’s clapping and cheering him on. Lynn was graduating from KOA.
Seeing and hearing the employees brought tears to his eyes.
“This is awesome and everyone has been great. I am so grateful for all of you” said, Lynn as he sat in the gym listening to the therapist and other KOA employees sing to him and cheer.
Melanie Fitch, community relations specialist at KOA said there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
“It was a moment like no other, the joy, the happiness, the excitement,” she said.
Lynn joined KOA in November with a cervical brace, trach with a speaking valve in throat, PEG tug in his abdomen, flaccidity in right arm and leg and such severe OA and hip/knee deficits that he could not stand. Lynn had been in an accident where a tree limb fall on top of him.
From this mishap he suffered a back and spine injury that caused him to be a quadriplegic. Over time, with the help of the therapist and staff he gradually progressed to being able to walk with assistance of two people in Mid January.
At Thanksgiving his family joined him at KOA for a family dinner. A tear rolled down his face as he struggled to hold his silverware while enjoying his pumpkin pie but with the smiles and praise from his family he did it.
Although, through all of these struggles and trials Lynn kept his chin up.
“If I can’t do it for myself, I don’t want anyone to do it for me,” he said.
According to Annette Unferdorfer, his physical therapist, Lynn is self-motivated.
“He was very focused on therapy and was ready to go every day,” Unferdorfer said. “What a pleasure and honor it has been to be part of the team to help him and his wife reach the goal of him going home.”
Abby Kock, his speech therapist, said Lynn has persevered.
“His positive attitude and motivation has contributed to his success with therapy. He was originally consuming honey thick liquids because his swallowing was impaired,” Kock said. “After working with him, over the course of a couple months, we upgraded to regular liquids. He was ecstatic.
“I will never forget when we performed a swallowing study at Kingston and it showed he could have regular liquids and he had tears of joy.”
