Cummings Elementary School teacher Carol Miller is helped down a ramp outside her Misawa city home Monday by her housekeeper. Medical and civil engineer troops at Misawa Air Base, Japan, rearranged and outfitted her home so it would be safe and wheelchair accessible, allowing her to mend at home rather than spending six to eight weeks at the hospital. (Jennifer H. Svan / Stars and Stripes)
MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — A bed and wheelchair are in her living room; an inflatable pool for baths is in her kitchen. Cummings Elementary School teacher Carol Miller’s world is upside down.
Fiercely independent, a Department of Defense Dependents Schools teacher for 26 years in five countries, Miller is adjusting to life with limited mobility and around-the-clock help.
On April 21, she broke her collarbone and two bones in her right foot and dislocated her left shoulder after falling from a gym treadmill.
Despite the temporary lifestyle change, stiff cast and chronic aches and pains, Miller’s spirits are soaring: She’s already back at school, teaching gifted education. And thanks to Misawa Air Base’s 35th Medical Group and 35th Civil Engineer Squadron, she’s mending at home. Otherwise, she said, she’d have faced a lengthy and costly recovery at the base hospital or at a more specialized medical clinic outside of Japan.
The medical staff, she said, rallied to find a way to get her home after just 10 days in the hospital.
“This was a unique case of ‘over and above the call of duty,’” Miller said Monday afternoon at her Misawa city house. “If they weren’t supportive, where would I have been? Up a creek.”
With two artificial hips and a synthetic shoulder, Miller said, she lacked the strength to regain her balance when a North area gym treadmill spun faster than anticipated. “It was like a tsunami,” she said. “I was on the floor.”
The hospital’s lone orthopedic surgeon, Capt. Eric Yao, and operating room nurses manipulated the artificial shoulder back into place. But Miller could not walk and needed help getting into and out of a wheelchair. Still, she was clamoring to go home, she said: She knew she’d be more comfortable there and each day in the hospital was costing $6,000, covered only partly by health insurance.
Yao said he, physician’s assistant Capt. Anthony Alexander and physical therapist Capt. Brad Kime evaluated Miller’s home for safety. They checked foyers and doorways for levelness, rolled up throw rugs and rearranged furniture.
“It was in the best interest of everyone for her to be at home,” Yao said. “She didn’t require acute nursing care. What she needed was access and help.”
Alexander asked friend Senior Master Sgt. Jeff Malherek, a civil engineer, to help provide a wheelchair-access ramp. Malherek and Tech. Sgt. Steve Chandler built one at no cost to Miller in less than a day. Nurses Lt. Col. Rebecca Kanter and Maj. Helen Lynn helped Miller find specialized in-home equipment, such as a portable bedside chair, at off-base department stores. Medical staff also worked with Miller’s insurance company to help defray some of the upfront costs.
The final, key piece was at-home help. Since Misawa lacks in-home nursing, Miller’s Japanese housekeepers agreed to stay at her home during her recovery.
“My initial thought was, we were going to have to keep her in the hospital for six to eight weeks because of her decreased mobility,” Yao said. “It’s kudos to everybody involved for coming together” to enable her to go home.
Kanter credited thinking out of the box. “We don’t have the resources you would have in the States. You get a little creative without breaking the rules.”
Miller said she’s astonished by the support. “I’ve never heard of anyone saying, ‘Let me have your keys. I’m going to your house … to straighten it out a little bit.’”
