Kathleen R. Watson, M.D. & Donald MacLaren
The Road Back is a must-read book for rehabilitation patients, their loved ones and their caregivers. The theme of this book is that you have to believe you can recover your health. The first half of the book details how Dr. Watson, a rehabilitation physician, nearly lost her life in Jamaica after being hit by a motorbike. Her dramatic story is both informational and inspirational. Dr. Watson reveals her personal successes and failures as a rehab patient struggling to become self-sufficient once again. Caregivers and loved ones need to read this book in order to better understand the struggles of rehab patients. The last section of the book includes important inspirational thoughts to help both the rehab patients and the caregivers. Dr. Watson looks forward to giving talks and having meetings with patients and caregivers as a way of helping and encouraging everyone to understand and make the healing process work better.
KATHLEEN WATSON, M.D., was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1945. She is board certified in Rehabilitation Medicine. She has worked all her career in various hospitals in the New Jersey and New York City metropolitan area, where she has served as Director of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation departments. She serves on the following international positions: Chairperson, Medical Committee, International Hockey Federation (FIH), Chairperson, Medical Committee, Pan Am Hockey Federation. Dr. Watson has been listed in Connolly's The Best Doctors: NY Metro Area. She had been chosen by Sir John Golding to be his replacement as Medical Director of the Mona Rehabilitation Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. This medical director appointment and her medical career, except for the Chairperson position of the Medical Committee of the FIH, had to be suddenly put on hold while Dr. Watson recuperates from fractures, nine surgeries and a traumatic brain injury incurred after being hit by a motorbike in Jamaica. Dr. Watson looks forward to using her accident experience and medical background to develop books and give talks about such topics as traumatic injuries, caregivers, and the aging process. She lives in Brooklyn, New York City.
DON MACLAREN, M.A., was born in Woodbury, New Jersey, in 1944. He earned a counseling license and a California Junior College teaching Certificate. His name appears in the Acknowledgments of the following books: Behind the Tall Walls, Musical Theater Choreography and Knight with Quill. He currently works on book and screenplay projects at his home in Astoria, New York City, where he lives with his wife.
Did someone check my blood pressure? What were they doing for me? I had lost blood. My blood pressure had fallen dangerously low. Life slowly drained from me. Were there no doctors on call at 6 P.M.? What happened to patients brought to the emergency room for care after hours, even at this only medical training hospital in Kingston? Did no resident or any medical staff work the night shift or be on standby call to see how I lay near death? Because I did not carry a medical insurance card, did that mean I would never get medical treatment to save my life?
I found myself in a twilight zone of the absurd. Ironically, I now lay in the University of the West Indies University Hospital where I had received my medical education and degree, but no one recognized me as 'Dr. Kathleen Watson.' How could a hospital abandon me, as if to leave me to die? What a bizarre situation:
I came in clearly as an emergency patient in need of immediate treatment, but no one gave me emergency treatment.
I never received proper ER treatment before being moved by an orderly to a bed on a ward around 10 P.M., four hours after I had been brought in. I had been washed, but lay unattended, gravely wounded.
I carried my business card, but neither the nurse nor anyone else attending me assumed that it was my card. For them, I almost did not exist. I was an outcast, a forgotten soul.
