88-year old priest walks, speaks again in 'remarkable' recovery after intense rehab
They carried George Bazylevsky, an 88-year-old Ukrainian Orthodox priest, into a Woodbury rehab center in October on a stretcher. A fall had paralyzed his vocal cords, turning him mute. Pneumonia and months of hospitalization had made him weak.
On Thursday, to cheers from family and staff at Excel at Woodbury for Rehabilitation & Nursing, he walked out. Then he gave a phone interview to a newspaper reporter.
"Remarkable," said Bazylevsky, parish priest for St. Volodymyr Chapel in upstate Kerhonkson. "When I came here I could not move, never mind standing or walking…Today was the exam when I walked out by myself."
If walking was the exam, Kandrap Shah was the teacher. A physical therapist who serves as senior coordinator for the cardiopulmonary program for Paragon Management, which operates the Woodbury facility, Shah recalled the first time he heard Bazylevsky speak.
The priest "told me he wanted to walk. I said, ‘I promise, George, if you’re going to be determined, I’ll be as determined as you, or more. You’ll be able to walk out of this building.’ "
The training regimen Shah designed for his star pupil was intense. Physical therapy was six days a week, speech therapy five. Cardiopulmonary group and individual work was three to five days a week.
Some of the workouts will strike the layman as unorthodox. There were sessions with a harmonica and recorder to build breath power and control, and something called cardio drumming. "You put a ball in a bucket in front of him with drumsticks," Shah said. "You do weight shifting, moving the legs back and forth, moving the hands and drumming. It engages the entire body… You’re keeping those muscles active so you get proper blood circulation going throughout the body. If you have that, oxygen gets distributed."
On some days, said Bazylevsky, "I was exhausted." Said Shah: "What he did was amazing, and I’m glad to be part of it."
Christina McMeekin of Locust Valley, Bazylevsky's daughter, attended the walkout Thursday. She’d told him that "things are going to get better — there is light at the end of the tunnel," in those months when it was hard to see.
One of the last sentences Bazylevsky uttered before he lost the ability to speak was to her: "I love you," so faint "you could hardly hear," she said. When he spoke again, he told her: ‘I want to go home to your mother," Oksana.
On Thursday, Bazylevsky left Woodbury, bound for Oksana and the assisted living facility in Lake Ronkonkoma where they will live together.
He’s looking ahead to April 24, the day the Orthodox celebrate Easter. "I spoke to some of my parishioners. They are waiting for me to come and bless the bread," in the Orthodox tradition, he said.
McMeekin said her dad will pass that exam, too. "I’m going to be there," she said.
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
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