Daniel MacDonald - CoPE Program

Daniel MacDonald is a 33-year old hospital based paramedic whose livelihood depends on his ability to lift people to and from an ambulance. He is married to his wife Tracy who is seven months pregnant, is going to college and has two children ages 14 and 16. The MacDonald family lives in Breckenridge, Texas a small community of about 8.000 outside of Abilene, Texas.

In September 2004, he injured his back while on the job after dead lifting and transporting three very heavy patients during a single shift. The first was from an overturned car accident and he and his partner had to extract a middle-aged woman from the back seat of her car by taking off the windshield to get in. After delivering her to the hospital, he felt sharp pain and burning in his hamstrings that would not subside. He thought he had pulled a hamstring so he continued working his shift. The next two patients were elderly heart attack patients each weighing between 350-400 pounds. After lifting the first one, his legs were “burning like crazy”.  After the second one was delivered to the ER at 3:00 a.m. he went home.

Daniel awoke the following morning and was unable to get himself up due to the excruciating pain in his back and legs. He finally was able to get into the ER bent over at a 90-degree angle. He was given injections for his pain, had a myelogram and tried three different anti-inflammatory pain medications to ease his pain. He continued working the next four months into January 2005. His pain was so bad that he could not continue working. He was unsuccessful in getting a physician to take his worker’s comp case after looking into a list of over 250 physicians so he resorted to using his local chiropractor as his treating physician.

He underwent two surgeries for his herniated discs but still the pain did not subside. After the second surgery Daniel experienced a 50% improvement but still suffered with shooting pain down both of his legs. He could not return to work and he and his family struggled make it through. “I had in my mind that a miracle would come through for me – something that would help – God, surgery, medicine – something! I tried non-weight bearing exercise and injured myself to the point of not being able to get out of bed or lift anything.  I was incapable of providing for my family.” Local churches helped out as much as possible but the family was spiraling into debt and credit cards were maxed out.

“I felt like I was completely losing myself and my sense of well-being – I felt like I was in a very dark, dark place. I lost the fact that I had any value to my family and to my community – disposable and abandoned. My family suffered so much and they had to go without. Anger and deep depression  ensued and Daniel even considered “checking out” as an answer to his life in pain. That is why when my doctor referred me to the program I decided that there was nothing else that offered any hope to me. I pinned all my hope on the program.”

“The CoPE program has turned out to be my light at the end of a very long dark tunnel.

I was given the gifts of hope, technologies, tools and skills to deal with my pain. Did it take away my pain? No, but it has taught me mental and physical control and how to function within my parameters. I still have pain but I know what to do with it and how to keep it in check.  As always, now that I am able to go back to work – my family comes first. All I expected to get out of the program was to be able to get back as close to where I was before my injury as possible. But, I got so much more. I got my life, my hope and my family back.” 

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Daniel MacDonald - CoPE Program

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