Surfer takes first steps on the road to recovery
One month from the day of his accident that injured his spinal cord, Dr. Matthew Wetschler makes incredible progress
“As I took my last breath, I screamed into the water. I was in an unsaveable situation, and I knew I was going to die”
— Dr. Matthew Wetschler, patient at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center
Eight days before Thanksgiving, Matthew Wetschler was body surfing at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach when a crashing wave drilled him head first into the ocean floor. The Santa Clara County emergency room doctor knew it was bad: He learned later his neck was broken.
“As I took my last breath, I screamed into the water,” the 37-yearold recalled Friday from his wheelchair at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. “I was in an unsaveable situation, and knew I was going to die.”
Wetschler shouldn’t have survived — let alone hoped to walk again after the spinal cord injury partially paralyzed him. But one month after his accident, Wetschler is celebrated taking his first steps in what his doctors and family are calling a series of miracles.
“I’ve just been amazed at how much he has recovered,” Dr. James Crew, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s chair of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, said Friday from the hospital’s new Sobrato Pavilion, equipped with the latest spinal-injury innovations.
Wetschler — who has been undergoing five hours of physical and occupational therapy five days a week — agreed.
“The first step was joyful,” he said, “and I don’t say those words often.”
The emergency-room doctor’s odyssey has astonished many in the field of spinal cord injury and rehabilitation who thought they had seen it all.
No one knows how long he had been floating in the water — not breathing, without any pulse — until another surfer dragged him to the shore, yelling for help.
By then, Wetschler’s body had gone gray.
Fate again intervened when two people near the beach that day happened to have medical training. One was an ICU nurse who saw him being pulled to shore; she immediately started CPR on Wetschler’s lifeless body.
The other was a physician who was packing up after surfing himself when he heard the commotion and ran over to help.
“The circle of care runs quite deep for this story,” Wetschler noted Friday. “Their care set the foundation for what I understand to be a remarkable recovery so far.”
Rushed to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Wetschler could not move his arms or legs. But his good fortune picked up again when he became the first person in the U.S. to benefit from new guidelines for treating individuals with a traumatic spinal cord injury.
The innovative protocols — developed by a team at Zuckerberg including Dr. Geoffrey Manley, chief of neurosurgery, and Dr. Sanjay Dhall, director of spinal neurotrauma — use advanced MRI imaging and neuromonitoring, focused on maintaining sufficient blood flow within the spinal cord.
It’s something that Dhall said Friday must be addressed within 12 hours of a spinal cord injury to be effective.
Emergency surgery at Zuckerberg followed to fuse five of his seven ver-
tebrae with metal rods, as well as a procedure to enlarge his spinal canal to relieve pressure on his damaged spinal cord.
The day after surgery, Wetschler said he could slightly move his left hand and leg.
“This disproves the notion that spinal cord injuries are permanent and irreversible,” Dhall said on Friday.
By Thanksgiving Day, Wetschler began rehabilitation at VMC's nationally renown spinal cord injury rehabilitation unit.
It was a homecoming of sorts. Wetschler had just started working part-time as a VMC emergency room doctor.
Once again, timing was everything: the rehab center is equipped with technologies like the one Wetschler practiced in front of reporters on Friday: a gait and balance system with an overhead track for practicing a wide range of walking and balance-related activities. There is also a wearable, robotic exoskeleton that allows people with certain spinal cord injuries to literally get back on their feet, and a new aquatic therapy pool includes an underwater treadmill.
As a result, Wetschler's pace of recovery has been uncharacteristically rapid.
Also applauding his progress are his 31-yearold brother Dane, who was the first person to call their parents, Jayne and Stanley Wetschler, who live just outside of Asheville, N.C., about the accident.
On Friday, the 6-foot 4-inch tall Wetchsler, still wearing a neck brace, repeatedly expressed his deep gratitude and appreciation for all those involved in his recovery.
Along the way, he's had time to reflect what it will be like to be a doctor again.
“Someday,” he said, “a patient will come in injured and frightened. And when everybody leaves, I will go up to them and say, ‘I came in here in a wheelchair, and I left walking.'”
Contact Tracy Seipel at 408920-5343.