is brought to you by PeakNutritionLabs.com A team of international researchers working on the development nutritional suppliments for improving health and longevity.

PeakNutritionLabs.com And by Swiss International Airlines.

Flying to over 70 worldwide locations.

Truly Swiss made.

Swiss International Airlines.

And by the BMW European Delivery Program, a way to experience the roads BMW was made to drive.

BMW European Delivery Program.

(instrumental music) "Travels and Traditions" with Burt Wolf is a classic travel journal.

The record of Burt search for information about our world and how we fit into it.

Burt travels to the source of each story, trying to find the connections between our history, and what is happening today.

What he discovers can improve our lives, and our understanding of the world around us.

(upbeat instrumental music) (scooter revving) (distant chattering) - In 2004, I spent a month of June filming in Taiwan.

We learned about Daoist traditions, how to send money to your ancestors, so they could buy things in the afterlife.

We took part in the lantern festival.

It was a great trip.

The day after we got back, I went to bed but had trouble sleeping.

So I got up and I went into my study to do some reading.

It's about three o'clock in the morning.

And after a few minutes, my wife Natalia came in and asked me what I was doing up.

I said that I couldn't sleep, I had heartburn from the pizza I had had that day, And she asked why I was sweating, and I said, well, I haven't turned on the air conditioner.

And she asked why I was rubbing my left arm.

And I said, it was sore from carrying all the equipment back from Taiwan.

And she asked if there was anything else bothering me.

And I said, well, my left jaw was bothering me because I'd had my teeth just cleaned by the dentist.

So I had the four classic examples of a heart attack, and a perfect non-medical reason for each.

(siren ringing) Natalia rushed me into a taxi and took me to the hospital.

My doctor met us there and I was put onto a gurney.

And the emergency room staff began to examine me.

In the middle of the examination, I had my heart attack.

(machine beeping) I had a quadruple bypass and after a couple of weeks, they put me in a taxi and basically said- - Goodnight and good luck.

- I was alive, and as Martha Stewart would say- - Now that's a good thing.

- The staff at the hospital treated my heart, and thank God they were good at it.

But after I left, I needed a lot of stuff to rehabilitate myself, and none of that was available.

I spent three months trying to figure out where I could get what I needed, to come back to a normal life.

Recently, a friend of mine needed a team approach to rehabilitation, and he told me about a place that he was going to.

It sounded like what I needed after my heart attack.

So I took a look at it and here's what I found out.

In 1793, Moses Gaylord, a country doctor in Branford, Connecticut purchased a 200 acre farm.

The land stayed in the family until 1903 when it was sold to the new Haven county anti-tuberculosis association, which was one of the first public health associations organized in the United States.

Tuberculosis called TB infects the lungs, and it's been around for 4,000 years.

By the early 1800s, it had killed one out of seven people who had ever been alive.

The cure was thought to be an extended period of rest, and relaxation, in a helpful climate with lots of fresh air.

The facilities designed to help cure patients with TB were called sanatoriums.

And one of the most successful was Gaylord in Wallingford, Connecticut.

By the middle of the 1950s it was clear that Gaylord was winning the war against tuberculosis, and it was time to refocus their objectives.

They transformed a tuberculosis facility into what could easily be the rehabilitation hospital of the future.

(instrumental music) - Our goal is really to influence rehabilitation medicine beyond Gaylord.

So we want to continue to do everything possible for our patients to help them with their recovery, but then also do research, and look at creating new technology, that's going to continue to advance rehabilitation medicine beyond Gaylord.

- [Patient] And?

- [Nurse With Floral Scrubs] And then make that transition.

- [Patient] Yea, that's what I'll do - We're on the move without a doubt.

Gaylord wants to find a niche such that we are able to expand our patient populations, to not just Connecticut and regionally, but to the entire United States, if not the world, in terms of who we can help and how we can help them.

- The staff at Gaylord has a completely different approach than the one that confronted me after my heart attack.

- That's good, that's good.

- They look at a patient, not just in terms of their illness, but also in terms of their home, their family, their work, their economics, and their mental attitude.

(everyone cheering) - We come together as a team, and by coming together as a team, we can unify our approach to patients.

And we all have a consistent plan and purpose that the patient wants to do.

That's really the key patient centered care.

- We really try and look at it from the longitude of their life.

We really focus on the whole person.

- [Doctor] Good morning.

- Good morning, so I got- - [Burt] They want to understand the patient's personal objectives, and to help them reach their goals.

- What leisure activities are they returning to?

What's their role within their family, within their employment, within their own micro society?

(piano playing) - So I've been practicing a lot of scales.

- My vision is to create the standard for rehabilitation medicine that really keeps the patient at the center of all that we do, but continues to push the envelope, and go beyond the boundaries, to help patients continue to evolve and get the most tremendous outcomes that they can get.

- We see people that never expected to be here.

Something's happened in their life, very traumatic.

So we really have to lay out what's going to change for them in the future, and develop that plan for them.

And that's really our goal is, how do we help people get back to what they're doing?

And then really contribute back to all the things that they can do as a person.

- [Burt] The staff continues to work as a team, focused on the specific needs of each patient.

The patient and not the condition is the center of their work.

- A team approach to care is really optimal when you're looking at helping patients achieve their goals.

Everybody comes at it from their area of specialty, but it's that, it's coming together, talking, debating each other, honestly, that helps provide the optimal outcome for our patients.

- The best way to see what the rehabilitation hospital of the future looks like, is to talk to the patients, and the medical teams that work with them.

(bright music) In the spring of 2016, Jillian Harpin was 23 years old, a recent graduate of Bentley university, and working as a financial analyst.

Somewhat exhausted by her work, she and three friends decided to take a week long vacation in Mexico.

On the fifth day of the trip, they came back from the beach and started getting ready for dinner, Jillian stepped out on the balcony to make a call home.

As she changed her seating on the balcony railing, she lost her balance and fell 40 feet to the ground below.

- I broke several vertebrae, my back, my ribs, my sternum, and ended up with a spinal cord injury.

- [Burt] Unconscious from the fall.

She was airlifted to Jackson Memorial hospital in Miami, Florida.

When she woke up the next day, she discovered that she was paralyzed from the waist down.

- I remember so vividly, waking up from a daze in the hospital, and my dad standing over me crying.

So worried about what my life would become.

And I looked up at him and said, dad like, I still have my hands, I still have my head.

I'm still Jillian, it's going to be okay, we'll get through this.

- Tell me if you're feeling light headed or- - [Jillian] So after a long five weeks in Miami, I was actually about to be sent home, but I wasn't ready to go home yet.

I didn't know how to get around on my own in a wheelchair, really how to take care of myself the right way.

- That's when we started searching out, and we found Gaylord.

- When I first got to Gaylord, I was still at a very low point, it was probably the most challenging point in my life that I've had thus far.

I was really only focused on getting through the next hour of the day.

- Her focus was on just getting out of bed, being able to do transfers, being able to do her self care.

- Jill was so positive.

It was amazing to see.

But she had her struggles just like everyone else.

Her attitude, I think made a huge difference, in the fact that no matter what I threw at her, and I threw a lot of challenges at her, she wasn't going to back down from any of them.

- When they treat a patient, they're not just treating the medical end of the patient.

They're treating the patient holistically.

The family becomes part of the treatment for the patient.

- The things that I thought were impossible at first, grew to be second nature the harder I worked at it.

And no matter how hard something seems in the beginning, the more you work at it, and the more time you put in, the easier it'll become.

(instrumental music) - [Female Announcer] Three, two, one, go, go, go, good luck.

- Every June Gaylord holds a 5k race, an obstacle run to raise money for its sports association.

For adaptive sports athletes, it's much more than a race.

- I was asked to be the adaptive athlete in the 2018 Gaylord gauntlet.

And I said, yes.

- Go Jill!

- Whoo!

(crowd cheering) - You got it.

- Two more, two more.

Here we go.

- Go, go.

- [Burt] The race contains mud pits, nets, ropes, walls, and lots of other difficult obstacles.

- [Jillian] Looking back on it, it's one of the greatest days of my life.

I've never been muddier.

I've never been more sore, and I've never been more excited to be with a group of people, challenged myself- (water rippling) to literally overcome obstacles that are placed in my path.

- I think that, recovery starts here at Gaylord, but it doesn't end after you go home.

So once you go home, then you want to get back to your life.

And sports is integral to that.

You know they start to get back into sports.

and they start to gain more confidence with their ability level, and learn really what they can do.

- I realized that- (crowd cheering) in life I can get through any obstacle put in my way, and after I crossed that finish line, I couldn't wait to see what my next challenge is going to be.

- Part of the reason for starting the obstacle race was we wanted to feature adaptive athletes.

So we've always invited adaptive athletes to participate.

We usually have a special adaptive athlete they were featuring, and their races have been very inspirational.

(instrumental music) (crowd cheering) - At Gaylord, we take the approach that you can do anything that you set your heart to.

There may be limitations in how you do it, but you can do it.

We don't say you can't do, we say you can do, and then we just figure out how to get there.

(distant chattering) - So my necklace is a gift from some of my friends at Gaylord, and it says, think possible.

It's Gaylord's motto, but it's also my mantra that I have every day on my journey to prove to myself, and to the world that there's nothing I can't do.

(lighthearted music) - If your sport is chess, or bridge, or even mahjong, the prospect for physical injury is fairly low.

My sport was sailing, which is relatively safe.

However, I once got knocked overboard by a shifting boom.

(water rippling) High on the list of contact sports with the potential for injury is ice hockey.

It's just down the list from Russian roulette.

(bell buzzing) Which brings me to the story of Garrett Mendez.

When he was in high school, he was on the lacrosse team and the hockey team.

As a freshman at a university, he could no longer speak or move.

- Garrett had always been that kid that would do anything for the team.

He saw an opponent take a shot on net- - I dove on the ice to try to get a puck.

I slid head first in the boards.

- I remember gasping in horror as he slid across the ice, and slammed head-first into the boards.

I was so afraid, I thought he'd broken his neck, or he was dead.

- I started to show symptoms of flu.

I started to vomit, my knees felt a little week, my face felt numb.

- When I went to check on him the next morning, I couldn't get him to respond, I couldn't, I'm shaking him, I couldn't get him to wake up.

I had to call 911.

That ambulance ride, it was the longest, and the most terrifying seven minutes of my entire life.

By the time we got to ICU, the only thing he could move was his head from side to side.

And the only sound he could make was this horrible crying sound.

As a parent, it was the most horrifying thing not to be able to help your child.

- Garrett had a stroke in the brainstem, and from a functional perspective, he was, a tetraplegic in that, he really did not have any good use of either one of his arms or his legs.

His trunk was very weak.

He couldn't communicate.

- One of the biggest memories I had of being, locked in syndrome, not being able to move, see or speak, was that I thought it was all a bad dream.

I thought it was a big joke.

And I would just wake up one day and I would laugh.

But then obviously that was not the case.

- Garrett came here to the inpatient unit, very sick and very impaired, with a very, very stressed out family.

- So when Garrett got here, he couldn't communicate and he was unable to eat.

The primary reason why he couldn't do either of those is because he could not move the muscles of his face, his jaw and his tongue.

So one of the focus of therapy was to get those muscles moving again.

He wanted pizza.

I would do whatever I can to get him to, to be able to have pizza.

- When we first meet a patient like Garrett, we go into the room, and do our initial occupational therapy evaluation and kind of just assess where he's at.

So we go in and we see how can Garrett get back to doing all the things that he likes to do?

- Garrett was always an incredibly hard worker.

And thankfully the therapists treated him like the athlete that he was and pushed him.

- He was a lacrosse player, I was a lacrosse player, so I was riding him about either you need to push harder.

And then I was able to work with him, and is able to help facilitate some of those first steps, which is just, again, taking the first step, which then leads to a lifetime.

- When they first told me that he would be out of here in eight weeks, I never believed them.

He couldn't move a thing.

Eight weeks later, he walked out the front door with the use of a Walker.

- [Burt] These days Garrett is back playing ice hockey, he also participates in the annual Gaylord golf classic.

And he's getting his degree in psychology.

(light hearted music) - So we're sitting on 390 acres of pristine pastoral land.

And I have to believe that a lot of our patients appreciate the fact that they're in a healing setting.

- It helps to make them connect with nature and not feel so sick, and not feel as if they're in such a sterile environment.

- [Burt] They address the patient's immediate needs that come with any serious illness, but they also focus on the life the patient plans to live in the future.

And they keep coming up with things that make life at Gaylord as interesting as possible.

- hop off.

Much better.

- [Burt] They built a greenhouse where patients can come, and care for plants and bring a few back to their rooms.

They developed a project to help patients get ready for the outside world, they would soon be confronting.

It's called easy street.

The staff uses simulated environments to allow patients to get reacquainted with daily activities like shopping, cooking, getting in and out of a car, and dealing with the dismal performance of the New York Knicks.

(lighthearted music) The Republic of Ghana on the west coast of Africa has a geography that ranges from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests.

It's growing economy and democratic political system have made it a regional power in west Africa.

It is the ancestral home of Sonia Bonsu.

- My family is from Ghana, west Africa originally, and me and my sisters took a trip to go out there and be with them.

And it would have been the first time that all of us were out there together at the same time.

- But soon after arriving in Ghana, Sonia was overwhelmed with fatigue and fever.

She had contracted a rare autoimmune disease that was wrecking her nervous system.

It's called A-D-E-M. - It's an autoimmune process that affects the lining of the nerves, the body's nervous system.

And in her case, she was basically paralyzed.

- The last thing I remember was that I had a fever, and I was really tired.

And then, I blacked out.

We got to the hospital, I was in the ICU on a ventilator, and had a feeding tube and I couldn't move.

They couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

- After 10 days in an intensive care unit in Ghana, she was flown back to the United States, and spent the next month in the intensive care unit at Yale New Haven hospital.

- I woke up and they started me on plasma phoresis, and that my body responded well to that treatment.

- [Burt] In preparation for her release, her husband began researching long-term rehabilitation facilities, and he decided on Gaylord.

It was one of the few places willing to admit a patient on a ventilator.

It also had facilities where her family could stay.

- It is nice to have family close by, to have had the support and encouragement through the process of rehabilitation.

- For her, she was very family oriented, so it was really nice, there was always a family member there.

So we used that to motivate her.

- It was a very remarkable transformation.

She went from being total care, to being able to walk out of the hospital independently.

- [Burt] Sonia's recovery involved long, hard hours of therapy, but she was also able to use new technology.

- She was an amazing patient to take care of.

It was really an honor.

She's the only patient I ever discharged that I cried over.

(bright music) - We've made a commitment over time to technology.

We'll be able to leverage that technology into research.

So using our zero G, we were working on a brand new software, upgrade with them to look at how people lose their balance.

And then we're able to translate that to other areas as well.

- [Nurse] Good, nice and- - [Burt] At Gaylord new technologies in healthcare are developed through specific research programs.

- We now have the Milam Institute for rehabilitation research.

So we're expanding our footprint in terms of real rehabilitation research, not just bench research, but transitional research where we combine clinical care with patient outcomes.

- They say that it takes 17 years to have research reach the clinicians.

So we're trying to shorten that, and make it accessible to our clinicians, and then others as well.

And really focusing on translational research, research that can be applied directly to, with the clinicians and to the patients.

We call it a bedside research not a bench research.

- I feel that one of the biggest problems in healthcare today is it's decentralized approach.

Each of the doctors that treat me, and my family is a specialist, working in their area of expertise with very little communication among them.

It's a perfect prescription for disaster.

The only way my family has been able to deal with it, is to bring information from one doctor to the other doctor, and hope that everybody knows what's going on.

- All of the team works together.

So we're having close communication with all of your needs as the patient.

So rather than just a therapist putting a note in the chart, and a physician reading it, we're actually talking to each other, and coming up with a coordinated plan.

- I think part of the problem with healthcare right now is that we look at patients as a set of symptoms, instead of looking at them as the whole person.

You need to find out about your patients, what motivates them, what helps them, what their goals are.

You have to get to know their family, their children's names, what they did for a living.

All of that helps us to set a goal that's individualized, and appropriate to help them meet their goals.

- It was a real insight to see how Gaylord worked.

It's clearly the rehabilitation hospital of the future.

Well, that's "Travels and Traditions".

I hope you will join us next time, right here on your local public broadcasting station.

If you'd like to see this program again, or any of the hundreds of programs we've made for our public broadcasting stations, visit Burtwolf.com or the Burt Wolf YouTube channel.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Travels and Traditions with Burt Wolf is brought to you by PeakNutritionLabs.com A team of international researchers working on the development nutritional suppliments for improving health and longevity.

PeakNutritionLabs.com And by Swiss International Airlines.

Flying to over 70 worldwide locations.

Truly Swiss made.

Swiss International Airlines.

And by the BMW European Delivery Program, a way to experience the roads BMW was made to drive.

BMW European Delivery Program.

(instrumental music)