ICU nurse Jeffrey Whitaker left his house on a cold night in January 2023 to cover a shift at Fresno Heart & Surgical Hospital — but he never made it. Instead, he woke up in Community Regional Medical Center’s emergency department where he learned he’d been in a car accident, and it changed his life forever.
“It was just like in the movies,” he said. “The faces would come over me and try to talk and try to tell me, ‘Can you hear me? Can you move this? Can you move that?’”
It was then the nurse, who spent decades helping patients in the ICU, realized he was a patient himself — and partially paralyzed from the chest down. Whitaker knew he was in good hands at Community Regional, the only Level I trauma center between Los Angeles and Sacramento.
“If you have a car accident … you want to go there,” Whitaker said. “They’re the best at what they do. So that’s where I went and, God bless them, they saved my life.”
Whitaker also knew the hard part — rehabilitation and learning how to navigate his new ‘normal’ — would begin once he was stable.
“Man, my life was great [before the accident]. I loved my job, where I worked … and it all came crashing down that night,” he said. “Everything was taken away from me.”
Whitaker struggled both emotionally and physically to come to terms with his injuries.
“I spent two and a half months at Community Regional … and then two and a half months at an out-of-town rehabilitation center,” he said.
Whitaker was discharged home from that rehabilitation center before he felt he was ready to go. He ended up at Clovis Community Medical Center four days later with a urinary tract infection.
A supportive environment at home and work is key to recovery
After recovering from his infection, Whitaker knew he couldn’t go home on his own. That’s when his chief nursing officer, Heather Rodriquez at Fresno Heart and Surgical, told him about Community Subacute and Transitional Care Center.“I didn’t even know this place existed and I’ve been with the Community family for over 20 years,” he said. “This is the place I’ve made more progress in my rehabilitation.”
Community Subacute & Transitional Care Center cares for patients who no longer need hospitalization but are so severely injured they are unable to return home, and need 24-hour medical supervision. Recently earning a 4-star rating by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for its high quality of care, the center provides transitional care as patients continue their long healing journey.
When he first arrived at the center, Whitaker said he was not in a good place mentally.
“I just wasn’t in it. I wanted my life to end,” he said. “Then one day I just woke up and started being more like my normal self.”
Whitaker said support from his brother Johnny, his family, friends and the staff at Community Subacute and Transitional Care was pivotal for him. He was ready to progress and get back home.
Occupational therapist Tejaswini Thakur said the rehabilitation team worked very hard with Whitaker.
“He is a Community employee, he is one of us,” she said. “I told him, ‘Jeffrey, you’re going to walk with a walker’ … and he would look at me and laugh.”
When Whitaker changed to a more positive mindset, his body’s progress soon followed.
“I believe the mind and body connection is an actual thing,” he said. “So if your mind is in the right state, your body will follow.”
Whitaker is back home now, with help from his family, friends and colleagues.
“I just gotta say, CSTCC has been great,” he said. “My brother Johnny … he’s been pivotal in turning me around … family is so important.”
Whitaker says his support group, both at home and at work, has helped him get back to living his different life.
Whitaker looks forward to his future at Community
“I don’t see myself going back to work as a nurse in the traditional sense, but that’s the beauty of nursing,” he said. “There’s so many different areas you can go into, like telehealth, nursing education, diabetic teaching — all kinds of stuff.”With more than 3,200 nursing positions across the system, Community nurses like Whitaker have opportunities beyond bedside care to continue to serve patients and the region in many ways.
Today, Whitaker says his rehabilitation is going to be a progression. He looks forward to doing things most people take for granted, like getting the mail from the mailbox, cooking in his kitchen or walking around the house.
“I’m walking with the walker but with braces on my ankles,” he said. “And that’s just fine with me now.”
