Anca's Story
After a successful liver transplant, at the Henry and Lucy Division of Montefiore Health System, Anca arrived at Burke Rehabilitation Hospital unable to stand on her own. She experienced issues with balance and footing, and a doubt that she kept mostly to herself: she wasn’t sure she would walk again. At Burke, she asked her therapy team directly, “Look me in the eye — do you think I’m going to walk out of here?”
They said yes. And she held herself to that challenge. Over the next two weeks, Anca worked through standing, getting in and out of a chair, riding a stationary bicycle, walking through the hospital and then outside. Stairs proved the hardest—a nerve condition had cost her significant hearing and balance loss. But her therapists stood with her at each turn. “I knew I always had them with me in case I lost my balance,” she said. “It was step by step, but I was so motivated, and they were so motivated for me.”
A transplant doesn’t end in the operating room. It remakes the body, she says, and becoming functional again is the hard work of rehabilitation. From the start, Anca met every session with the same attitude — grateful to be there, determined to make the most of it. “I would take any kind of challenge, any pain, anything,” she says, “just to move ahead.”
Her therapy team--including physical therapists Dana Megin and Ashley Pathyil, DPT, and occupational therapist Nicole Touri—built a plan calibrated to her progress and her overarching goal:to walk again. As she advanced, they advanced the work with her. In the Activities of Daily Living Studio where patients rehearse what they execute at home, Nicole mapped out three tasks for the session. Anca said, “No, let’s do everything today!”
"She approached every stage of her recovery and rehabilitation with determination, resilience, and a willingness to work hard," say Nicole. "She is a role model for other patients because she demonstrated that recovery is about more than physical healing it is also about mindset."
Added Dana, "She came to therapy every day with a wonderful attitude. There was no challenge she wasn't willing to try."
When the team told her she was ready for discharge, Anca asked if she could stay longer. They said no, she recalls with a laugh. They assured her she was ready. "I was looking forward to going home," Anca says. "But I was going to miss these people." Her husband, Sorin, had come every day throughout her stay, sitting in on sessions, and the Burke team told Anca they trusted that what they had started at Burke, she and Sorin would continue at home. Which they did, diligently, until she was strong and independent as she wanted to be.
A year later, Anca thinks back on how she came into Burke, as unsure of her body as she'd ever been, and walked out on her own two feet. She knows all that went into the recovery and is enormously grateful for the talented team that got her there. "With all my heart I tell you this," she says. "Surgery saved my life. Burke changed my life."
