Therapeutic recreation makes life sweeter for people with disabilities
Jacob Jorgensen rises from the water, his smile as wide and clear and perfect as a cloudless Montana sky. He’s grasping a neon-colored diving stick in his good hand, and with the help of Eagle Mount instructor Bill Bacon, Jacob can have some fun while easing his palsied muscles in the calming waters of the pool.
“He got up at 4:30 this morning and couldn’t wait to go swimming today,” Val Jorgensen, Jacob’s mother, says. She sits with her husband along the edge of the newly built pool on the Eagle Mount campus, watching her son’s progress as he learns to trust Bill and the body that constantly betrays him.
“Jacob has made great strides with Bill,” she said.
The Aquatic Therapy Center at Eagle Mount, just fully opened last year, is the culmination of many years of work. The pool, 75 feet by 40 feet, was built especially for the participants of the program, with a ramp for access running the entire length of the pool. Using saline instead of chlorine, the water is safer and gentler on the skin. The temperature is kept warmer, so the participants can make the transition into the water more easily, allowing their muscles to relax.
With floor to ceiling windows, not only can the sunlight stream in, but anyone inside the facility benefits from the extraordinary views of the Bridger Mountains jutting up across the horizon.
Before the Aquatic Therapy Center opened, Eagle Mount held its water-based programs at local hotel swimming pools. But now, the center can offer more programs in a friendlier and better equipped environment.
Twelve-year-old Jacob was born with cerebral palsy. For him, it affects the muscles in most of his body, and when he’s not in the water, he uses his wheelchair. As Bill lifts Jacob by the waist and fairly throws him across the short expanse of the chest-high water, Jacob’s legs stretch and his arms pull him toward the bright orange diving stick on the bottom.
“He can do a little backstroke, and he’s just got a natural confidence in the water,” Jeff Jorgensen, Jacob’s dad, says, his eyes never leaving his son.
Nearly 25 years ago, retired Air Force General Robert C. Mathis and his wife, Greta, achieved a lifetime goal – to create a place in the Rocky Mountains where people with disabilities could enjoy all the recreational benefits people without disabilities could enjoy. They came to Bozeman and started Eagle Mount, a place with unparalleled therapeutic recreation opportunities for people of all ages.
“It’s been a long-range plan for Eagle Mount to build our own Aquatic Center,” Executive Director Chris McGregor says. “It’s been open for about a year now, and it’s been great. All the programs here are terrific. Eagle Mount changes lives, and we see it on a daily basis.”
Bill fits Jacob with a snorkel mask, carefully placing the large piece of plastic over his face. Val reaches across the short expanse from the deck and adjusts the nose cover.
“The hardest part for him is the mouthpiece because his tongue is constantly pushing outward,” Jeff says, as Jacob turns away from him and toward his exploration of the pool’s bottom. “It must feel good for him, for his body to be so free in the water. It must feel like he’s flying.”
When McGregor speaks about Eagle Mount changing lives, he’s not just talking about the people who participate in the programs, he’s talking about the volunteers as well.
“It affects everyone who gets involved here,” he says. “Eagle Mount truly is a family. The support and the caring here … everyone is 100 percent for the participants.”
Last year 1,619 volunteers put in 27,348 hours for 1,075 participants, for all Eagle Mount’s programs, including downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, swimming, horseback riding, the Big Sky Kids summer camp for young people with cancer, horticulture, adaptive golf, ice skating, kayaking, cycling, and a support group Saturday Night Out, which gives caregivers a much needed night to go out on their own.
“There are so many successes, both big and small,” McGregor says. “In one of our swimming classes there are two boys. One helps the other into the pool – for them there are no disabilities. They just don’t see it.”
As Jacob surfaces again, with his face distorted with the snorkel but still smiling, he’s not even close to being tired.
“He’s learned to flip himself over in the water,” Jeff says. “So if anything ever happened while he was in the water, he’d be okay.”
Bill talks to Jacob constantly, telling him to “relax, focus.” He also reminds him how to breathe while wearing the snorkel. Jacob catches on right away and before long Bill and Jacob decide to take off for the deep end.
The Aquatic Therapy program also has the highest number of participants, second only to skiing in the winter months and therapeutic horseback riding during the warmer months.
“Jacob has also been part of the therapeutic horseback riding program for the last five years,” Jeff adds. “He’s more active than we are. When he comes home from these programs he’s exhausted, which is great. And he can talk to his friends at school about skiing, swimming and horseback riding.”
Beginning in late March or early April, the Eagle Mount Therapeutic Riding Center opens for the early summer, summer and fall program. It is a Premier Accredited Center, and its instructors are registered and certified through the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA).
“We call our horses our angels,” Equestrian Director Maggee Harrison says. “Sometimes we call them our warriors, too.
They really are a special kind of horse, and they treat every rider differently, depending on their needs.”
Those benefiting from therapeutic riding cover a vast array of people, from those individuals with good upper body strength to those with severe multiple disabilities.
“For instance, my husband has multiple sclerosis,” Harrison says. “His disability is mild; he’s been part of the program here at Eagle Mount. Riding has given him a freedom of movement that he wouldn’t otherwise have. He can’t walk a trail, but now, since he trained here, he’d be able to get on a horse and go places that would have been impossible for him. His nerves are not talking to the muscles, so he’s learned to compensate.”
For others it’s just being on a horse, whether it’s resting his or her body against the body of the horse or riding in a saddle, with two instructors walking on each side of the rider as well as a leader in front, that can reap huge benefits.
“Some people just lay on the horse as we walk,” Harrison says. “The heat of the body and the rhythm of the horse’s gait can relax muscles. It’s wonderful. You can watch it helping.”
Participants unable to speak can communicate while in the riding arena.
“We try to find out what they’re working on in school and integrate that into the riding arena,” Harrison says. “We want it to be a safe and happy experience.”
One of the biggest challenges for Harrison is turning away people who want to donate their horses to Eagle Mount.
“People always want to give us their old arthritic horses,” she says. “But we have very specific qualifications for our horses.”
Harrison’s ideal horse is 14 to 15 hands, with an even gait in the trot.
“If the gait is even, some of our participants who have upper strength can benefit from a forward-moving horse,” she says. “And we need a horse with a good temperament that is very intelligent and able to read people.”
Nearly all the horses at Eagle Mount suffer from burn-out.
“We’re lucky to get three full years of service from a horse,” Harrison says. “And we need a stable of about 14 horses. But horses are very accident prone, so we like to keep 18 horses on the grounds.”
The grounds are located on a 10-acre piece of land off of North 19th in Bozeman. Eagle Mount has affiliated locations in Billings, Great Falls and Helena. Each facility has its own programs and act independently of each other, but share common goals.
Some of those goals include providing the highest quality, safe and fun programs that transform the lives of all who come through the doors; to add new recreational programs as needed; and to create Eagle Mount as a “home base” where participants, their families and volunteers, as well as donors can interact and cultivate important emotional attachments.
As the mission statement hanging on the wall outside the large meeting room states: Eagle Mount Bozeman is committed to provide quality therapeutic recreational opportunities for people with disabilities or cancer, and to provide support for families of participants so that, “they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 4:31).
For Jacob and others like him, the programs at Eagle Mount have certainly allowed them to fly.
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