The Practice Ride
Early on the morning of July 8, 2020, rancher Chuck Rein started out on a practice ride with his favorite horse, Dinero. He was preparing for a weekend of packing salt to his cattle, which were grazing high up in the grassy meadows of the Crazy Mountains. Dinero had been known to buck in the past, so Chuck took special care to avoid spooking his traveling companion as they set out on their test ride in the field in front of Chuck and his wife, Pam's, house.
The ride was going as planned, when Chuck suddenly felt the horse shift and lurch. The world began to spin as he was forcefully bucked into the air, followed by a dramatic crash to the hard ground below. The wind escaped his lungs in a rush of air, but—after taking a few moments to process what had just happened—Chuck looked to knock the dust off and get back in the saddle. After sitting up, he noticed that he was having trouble catching his breath. Chuck’s son, Charlie, who lives nearby, rushed to the scene upon hearing what had happened and mentioned that Chuck could have suffered more than merely having the wind knocked out of him. Chuck and his wife decided it was time to hop in the truck and head to the emergency room at Livingston HealthCare (LHC).
After an excruciating hour-and-a-half ride from their ranch north of Big Timber, Pam finally pulled up outside Livingston HealthCare’s Emergency Department. She quickly asked the registration desk for help getting Chuck out of the car and was soon met with a team of medical personnel who carefully assisted Chuck to a wheelchair and into the medical center for an evaluation. “That moment—getting into the wheelchair—was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” he recalls.
“Once I was inside, I encountered nothing but caring and professional staff for the remainder of my stay,” says Chuck.
After the attending emergency physician, Dr. Raymond Wright, had assessed Chuck’s condition, he ordered a CAT scan to better understand what was going on inside his body. Pam was amazed when LHC had imaging results back from Billings Clinic in 20 minutes. The verdict: six broken ribs—all on one side—a partially-collapsed lung and hairline fractures on his vertebrae.
“We were hoping he could get checked out and sent home, but after Dr. Wright suggested that he receive an IV, I figured we would be here for a while,” Pam recalls with a chuckle.
The next stop for Chuck would be a consultation with LHC’s trauma surgeon, Dr. Justin Roberts, for an overview of his injuries and explanation of what to expect moving forward. “My first encounter with Dr. Roberts was over a year ago at a scheduled Clinic appointment, so I was surprised when he popped his head in the door with a big smile and said, ‘Hey Chuck, remember me?’ Every time I talked with him [Dr. Roberts] or one of the nurses, I felt like I was the only patient they had—everything felt so personal the entire time," Chuck says.
Chuck spent five days total in the LHC hospital recovering from his laundry list of injuries. “The [hospital] room was spotlessly clean, which means a lot,” he recalls. Several nurses kept an eye on him while he rested. One nurse, Angela, stands out in his mind. LHC’s smaller size allows nurses to spend time with each patient, getting to know them and building a relationship while providing care. Chuck recalls this being nice because he didn’t have to repeat himself with every encounter and it allowed Angela to provide personalized care each time they interacted.
Amazingly, less than a month after he was bucked off his horse, Chuck has been able to gradually return to his normal duties on the ranch. He requires periods of rest with a heating pad to ease some lingering pain, but has even been able to climb into the swather to cut hay, which seemed a distant possibility only weeks before when he was lying in a hospital bed. “Part of healing is being comfortable both physically and mentally, and the level of care there [at LHC] was personal, it was ‘I really care about you,’ and that reaches me,” he says of his experience at Livingston HealthCare.