Moss-Magee Gives Hope, Healing to Spinal Injury Patient

Melissa McKelvey knows that life can change in an instant.

In November 2022, the Lancaster resident was at her job as a lab technician in a cast iron foundry when a heavy weight came crashing down on her neck. The impact severed her upper spine, leaving her paralyzed and unable to breathe on her own.

The situation would seem hopeless to some—doctors initially told her she would be lucky if she could even move her mouth. But McKelvey also knows that catastrophic events do not have to define you. Especially when you have Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital on your side.

“This place was a blessing… this place gave me hope,” McKelvey says.

Following the accident, she was stabilized at a local hospital, then transferred to Moss-Magee Center City.

“They told me that I could do anything I wanted, and to never give up hope,” she recalls.

She spent the next 15 months in physical and occupational therapy, working to regain the ability to breathe on her own, to move her arms and hands, and to begin the process of taking back her life.

In June, the ventilator tube was removed. With the help of art therapy and other programs, she began to use her arms and hands. She has even taken up painting as a hobby.

“I have come a very far way, but none of it would’ve been possible if it wasn't for this hospital,” she says. But the healing, she adds, is not just physical—it’s mental, too.

“In the beginning it was hard because I was trying to adapt to my injury,” she says. “Everybody in the hospital helped me get through that just by listening to me when I was upset. Their patience and their guidance helped me get to the mental state I’m at today. This place is family to me.”

She also credits a lot of her recovery to having her boyfriend—now fiancé (he proposed at the Three Seasons Room at Moss-Magee during her stay)—by her side. When the daily train rides to and from Lancaster became too much for him, the Friends of Jerry Segal Guest Housing fund helped pay for a hotel room across the street from the rehab facility.

The fund is financed by the annual Jerry Segal Classic. This year, 132 golfers teed off at the Green Valley Country Club on September 13 to raise $400,000 for Segal programs at Magee, including housing, equipment, and a patient activity fund. Over its 35-year history, the outing has raised $22 million to benefit the patients at Moss-Magee.

McKelvey is grateful for the dedication of the hospital staff, and for the Friends of Jerry Segal for supporting her recovery through helping her fiancé stay nearby and sponsoring programs at facility. She and her fiancé currently live in Roxboro so she can be close to Moss-Magee, where she continues her physical and occupational therapy.

While McKelvey knows that life can change in an instant, she is committed to changing it again because—as she was told on her first day at Moss-Magee—an anything is possible.

“I went from my first exercise of making kiss faces to getting off the vent and moving my arms,” she says. “Everything is coming back slowly but surely. Every day is a blessing.”