Ernest Ramey works with Rachael Schaier at the McGuire VA Medical Center. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Ernest Ramey is back in basic training.
He’s an Army veteran who last served about 38 years ago, so it’s a familiar concept, but the training he’s undergoing now is indeed basic, rethinking and reworking how he performs everyday tasks as he seeks to master a prosthetic right arm that he first put on Dec. 14.
It’s Thursday morning at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Ramey is working under the guidance of Occupational Therapist Rachael Schaier. This hour, he’s working on manipulating a drinking cup and a mug, filling the utensils, holding them and walking around with one in hand. Earlier he was shooting pool, resting the cue on the prosthetic as he took aim and pushed the stick with his left hand.
Ramey is taking part in McGuire’s amputee boot camp, a 3-year-old program that provides veterans with intensive training in mastering their prosthetics. The program offers a week of twice-daily training sessions across a range of skills and disciplines and is designed to improve mobility, says Patty Young, the amputee rehabilitation coordinator at McGuire.
Ramey is the first camp participant with an upper-limb prosthetic. He lost his arm in a battle with blood clots, part of a litany of health woes he’s faced since a heart attack in 2015. He was asleep when the heart attack struck, and his wife, Theresa, heard him struggling to breathe. She called 911, then performed CPR as she awaited an ambulance.
Ernest Ramey remembers nothing of the incident until 24 hours later, when he awoke in a hospital bed. “I know nothing about none of it,” he says.
Eye issues followed, as Ramey dealt with glaucoma that has claimed the sight in his right eye. He suffered powerful migraines in 2017, and was equipped with a pacemaker in 2018.
The blood clots struck in October of this year. It felt, he says, like a tingling, pins and needles sensation, only painful. His fingers turned in and turned black, dead from a lack of oxygen. It progressed and it ended up taking most of his arm.
On top of all that, he sustained a back injury in a fall in November.
Despite all his struggles, he’s a fighter, and he’s grateful to be here. A recent physical offered good news: His blood pressure is down, his kidney function is good, and everything is OK. “I still made it, and I praise the Lord for that,” he says.
Ramey gives credit to his wife and his daughter, Ashley, for their support through his medical travails.
John Jacobs crafted Ramey’s prosthesis at McGuire. It’s designed to be the same size as Ramey's other arm, and Jacobs will eventually add a flexible wrist component that will make it even easier to use. “He’s done very well,” Jacobs says of Ramey's adjustment to the new hardware.
Generally, training is done in sessions held about three times a week, but this is intensive work undertaken twice each day. There’s frustration in the training, but overall Ramey is very pleased. “So far, everything has been wonderful,” he says.
Young says the boot camp is offered as needed and has been utilized by up to 14 people a year. She says it also helps with some lessons that can only be provided in the real world. Walking around the McGuire corridors is useful, but staff and patients will get out of the way of someone learning to walk on a prosthesis, she says. That won’t happen out in a parking deck, where one must also deal with uneven surfaces, potholes and other obstacles.
Past field trips have included Belle Isle and a football field for a veteran who was a youth football coach, Young says. “We try to make it real to life. We make it all very relative to what they’re going to do when they get out of here.”
Ernest Ramey (Photo by Jay Paul)
Poor weather on Thursday meant a change of plans for Ramey, who, instead of going to a home improvement store, navigated a store inside McGuire.
Ramey is thankful that he is a natural lefty for eating and writing and other everyday tasks. He playfully describes Schaier as his right hand, and says that she is a natural in teaching the use of the prosthetic. “She must have had one of these in another life,” he says.
Shaier and the others demonstrate a skill a couple times, then Ramey gets to work. He’s already mastered buttoning a shirt, for instance. “I was a little unsure of this, because I was unsure of how I could handle everyday tasks,” he says. The boot camp wraps up today, and for the first time Ramey will wear the prosthetic home, just in time for Christmas.
Christmas is very much a family affair for the family, including Christmas Eve at a sister-in-law’s home and the Rameys playing host to a Christmas breakfast for 25, he says.
Theresa Ramey says she’s grateful for the VA program. “We’re trying to get him to be self-sufficient, and the boot camp has helped with that,” she says.
