After the flood, Therapy Works is back home

ELIZABETHTOWN – Once again, Cape Fear Valley Health has brought forth another victory for Bladen County as they have partnered with and welcomed Amy Nolan, the owner of Therapy Works and the director of speech pathology to a grand reopening and new building at 619 Cypress Street in Elizabethtown.

“I’ve had the privilege of working in and serving Bladen County for 24 and a half years,” Nolan said as she addressed a large crowd of colleagues and well-wishers from the community. “It’s a privilege also to be here at Cape Fear Valley and work with all the wonderful patients; children all the way up to geriatrics. I want to thank my staff. They are the best. They have been with me for a very long time.”

Nolan has a bachelor’s of Business Degree in business from the University of North Carolina – Greensboro and also a Master of Science – Communicative Disorders from the University of Wyoming.

The Elizabethtown – White Lake Chamber of Commerce hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony which officially welcomed the team to their grand reopening. The program included a thank-you from Nolan, a word from Chamber director Amy Hudson, Amber Bordeaux from Cape Fear Valley Health and a word from the Town of Elizabethtown board member Ricky Leinwand.

“This is special for me because right in that hospital six months after it was built in 1952, I was the ninth baby born there,” Leinwand said. “This is a real treat to be part of this and on behalf of the Town of Elizabethtown we’re here for you any way we can be here and we thank you for inviting us.”

“We’re lucky to have you here,” Bordeaux, patient relations and executive assistant for Cape Fear Valley – Bladen healthcare said. “We are thankful for all of what they do in the community. They work with children, but they also work in our hospital with our patients on the floor.”

The celebration at the Speech Unit had set up tables for coloring and balloons for the children, a free hot dog lunch provided by the hospital culinary staff and a white, miniature pony named “Uno” which was the most popular attraction for the children.

Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Nolan has helped a lot of patients to live normal lives and has witnessed many miracles as her staff has worked tirelessly with patients that have become family. Her father was a physician and my mother was a nurse so I knew I wanted to be in the health field.

“I just hadn’t quite figured out that path until a little bit later,” she said. “I was leaning initial toward physical therapy, and speech therapy isn’t quite as popular. When I started taking some of the core classes I just got fascinated with the brain and how we were able to rebuild that when someone loses their speech.”

A path less traveled, but she has embraced the adventure with passion and a gift for caring for her patients.

“We’ve lived in North Carolina for 28 years,” Nolan said. “The graduate trail to Wyoming actually started in south Lake Tahoe at Heavenly and my husband (Patrick) and I wanted to stay out west for graduate school. He’s a family counselor and I am obviously a speech pathologist. We settled on Laramie and we loved it.”

The Nolans are the “middle health” power couple and have been using their gifts and talents for over two decades to benefit the people of North Carolina.

“We came back in ’98 and have been in North Carolina ever since,” she said. “We service children from pediatrics all the way up to geriatric patients. It’s articulation, so it’s how you say your speech sounds. Also, language and for the older people it’s cognition. If they’ve had a stroke or a traumatic brain injury. Then we also do swallowing. I like to say it’s everything from the shoulders up. We are also able to do some specialized things – augmentative communications, swallowing therapy, we do the Modified Barium Swallow Studies (MBSS) and we service the inpatients for their acute care.”

MBSS is a fluoroscopic (real-time X-ray) procedure used to evaluate a person’s swallowing function, specifically focusing on the oropharyngeal and cervical esophageal stages. It helps identify any abnormalities in the swallowing mechanism and assess the risk of aspiration (food or liquid entering the lungs).

“In our journey over the past 24 and a half years we’ve been all over the hospital,” she said. “We started in what is now administration, then we went across the hall, we went downstairs, we’ve been everywhere. We’ve now been in this office for quite some time and then two years ago when we had the hurricane it got flooded. We moved everything out into a box and we moved to three different offices again (in the hospital). Then the box flooded.”

Anticipation of a permanent move was then dampened and delayed again. The team was resembling the old TV show “MASH” – as they were becoming a mobile army SPEECH hospital.

“We have just been able to move back in after two years,” she said. “They renovated it so very nicely. My staff has been absolutely amazing. They pick up and move and our families follow us and we are so thankful because that is hard. Kids sometimes don’t adjust to new situations. Sometimes they have to go into a doctor’s office instead of a fun speech environment. It’s been a transition, but I’m thankful to be back home.”

Her legend is growing in North Carolina as is her legacy.

“Oh, it’s such a gift to be able to be with these families and to touch these children’s lives,” she said. “I love watching them progress. It’s such an honor when I see a child who’s been discharged from my program and then they are in kindergarten and they don’t remember who I am because early intervention changed them. It’s definitely a special thing.”