Angie Heister and her husband, Robert

In Part I of Angie Heister’s story, she described the horrific attack by a Cape buffalo in Zimbabwe four years ago. Global Rescue conducted a medical evacuation and deployed our paramedics to her bedside.

In Part II, Angie is back home in Dallas after Global Rescue evacuated her from Johannesburg. She shares her struggles with transitioning to her new life, along with the satisfaction of mentoring others and of traveling again.

Part II

Coming home

We were back in Dallas on the way to Baylor and the Global Rescue paramedic told the driver to slow down on the turns since I didn’t have good balance.  He was watching out for things like that. He took the best care ever, ever, ever.”

After approximately six weeks in rehab, Angie was discharged to go home in August 2011.

“The first six months were pure hell,” said Angie. “You have to learn to take care of your bladder and your bowels, and trying to transfer and not fall, just so much. We had to have our bathroom remodeled because I couldn’t get in the shower. I had hired a caregiver to stay with me.  At first I had to have 24- hour support, so it was the caregiver, my daughter, and my husband. Gradually I got stronger and started with two hours all by myself. It was May 2012 before we let the caregiver go and I was truly ok just to be by myself in the house.

“To put it in perspective, I was a software consultant before the accident.  I traveled a lot. I was executive platinum and traveled 100,000 flight miles a year. I was at home two weekends a month usually.  I went from that lifestyle to a complete shut-in except for weekends. It was a shock. It just turned my life upside down.”

Looking ahead

Four years after that fateful day, Angie maintains a positive outlook on life, despite remaining paralyzed from the accident.  Her determination brought her to where she is today, enjoying traveling and her independence while helping others cope with the transition to life in a wheelchair.

“I took classes so I could drive again in October 2012, and bought a van that is modified with a ramp and hand controls. It was months before I dared to get on the highway. It was like learning to drive again but I was terrified.  Now I drive to a lot of places every day by myself, even the highway. It’s no big deal but it really took a long time to get back to that. Now I’m perfectly good: I go places by myself all the time. If my husband is out of town, I’m ok in the house by myself, even during the night.

Importance of mentoring

“I had incredible support early on. There was a lady named Lynn I had worked with and when I was lying in the hospital in Africa, I remembered her coming to work in a wheelchair. There wasn’t anything special about it.  To me, she’s superwoman. She has been in a wheelchair for 30 years and is so strong and independent. She won a silver medal on horseback at the Paralympics in Australia. Lynn would come over and show me things. For example, I was having trouble getting up a little one-inch step from the garage into the house. Now it’s no big deal, but at the time I didn’t have the balance or the strength, so she showed me a different way to do it. She told me that there were things like this they’ll never show you in rehab. You’re only going to learn this from other people in chairs. She was so right.

“I’m actually mentoring some ladies now. Statistically, people who end up with spinal cord injuries are usually young males between 15 and 30 years old, basically risk takers. A 50-year-old grandmother is not your usual spinal cord injury patient. So, occasionally when they have ladies who have gone through some car wrecks or other accidents, (Baylor) has called me. I try to help these ladies and tell them that when I came home from the hospital, I couldn’t do such-and-such either, but I do it all the time now. I try to give them that encouragement and tell them to keep working at it.

“Lynn told me it would take two years to adjust, but I think it’s more like three. Most days now it’s no big deal, but occasionally I have a bad day or something happens that I can’t do and it’s so frustrating. The whole family has adjusted. They say it’s not just the individual who goes through this; it’s your whole family because everybody has to adjust. It took a long time to get there and it took a lot of work and a lot of support from family.

Traveling again

“We’ve started traveling,” continued Angie. “It took about a year but we’ve gone to Los Angeles several times to see family. My husband and I took a vacation and traveled to New England in September. We’ve been to Vegas a few times, and to Florida and North Carolina.  We travel a lot so that’s good.

“During one of our trips, we spent an evening with one of the Global Rescue paramedics who deployed to help us.  It was wonderful to see him. What does this tell you about the people at Global Rescue when, so many years later, we’re still staying in touch?”

Angie’s advice

“As I look back, I’m so thankful that we had a Global Rescue membership before we traveled,” said Angie. “My husband had been to Africa twice before and had had such a wonderful time. He loved it and wanted to share that with me. I was going with him on this trip. I’m the non-adventurous type and I insisted that we get it. He had seen Global Rescue at one of the safari conventions and was familiar with it so we bought the memberships.  It never occurred to me I would be the one who would need it. I was always thinking, ‘It’s going to be my husband. What if something happens in the middle of the hunt or if he gets hurt by an animal?’ Never in a thousand years did it ever occur to me that I would be the one that needed the help from Global Rescue. I’m guessing it would have cost somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000 to get me home had we not been Global Rescue members.

“Any time my friends are traveling anywhere, I tell them they must get a Global Rescue membership.   People don’t understand that travel insurance is so different than having Global Rescue personnel come to you and personally take care of you and bring you home. I can’t imagine my husband being able to get me home alone and having no one else to help me make the flight home. It’s just not the same when you’re in that kind of situation. You really need what Global Rescue provides. You need somebody there who has access to resources and experience and knows what to do, because you’re just lost and in shock and you just don’t know what’s going on. You’re so short sighted, just trying to get through the next day. You think, am I going to be breathing again tomorrow? You’re not in any kind of shape to be making arrangements to fly home.”

Angie’s advice for travelers:

–If you’re traveling to an area that’s not very well developed, do some research to get an idea of what hospitals and services are in the area. Is it like the U.S. where you get treated and then pay or do you have to pay before they admit you?

–Check whether your health insurance works in places you are traveling to and determine if you should purchase a special health insurance policy.

–Carry a satellite phone and extra batteries.

–Have a Global Rescue membership.

“I’m one of your best salespeople,” said Angie. “Anytime anyone is traveling, I tell them, ‘You’ve got to get Global Rescue.’ I can’t even imagine what would have happened had we not had Global Rescue. I would have ended up in Zambia in a less-than-stellar hospital. I might not even have lived had I not gotten to a tier-one trauma center. I would have gotten an infection in that wound. The fact that I never got an infection is a miracle and I know it’s because I got to a good hospital. As you probably know, I think very highly of Global Rescue.”