During last Friday night’s Art Heals benefit at the Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, the part art plays in healing catastrophic injuries took center stage.
ABOVE PHOTO: Art therapist Katie Durr hugs Candice Davis, one of the winners of the Daren Dieter Excellence in Art Award. Davis began participating in the day program at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital’s Riverfront hospital after COVID-19 led to her becoming a multiple amputee. She credits the program with helping her to foster a sense of independence. (Photos: Denise Clay-Murray)
By Denise Clay-Murray
Seated in her wheelchair at the Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Center City, Candice Davis, one of the participants in the hospital’s Art Therapy program, talked about what the program has done for her. In August 2021, seven days after her 30th birthday, Davis was hit with COVID-19, she said. The virus attacked her heart, which led to her being put into a medically induced coma and placed on a respirator.
“[The doctors] wouldn’t give up on me, so they left me on the Ecmo machine,” she said. “But because that machine is only designed to only pump blood to your heart and lungs to keep you alive, I ended up losing blood flow to my limbs, so I developed gangrene, and I ended up getting multiple amputations.”
While doing day rehabilitation program at the Magee’s Riverfront center, Davis discovered dance therapy, music therapy and art therapy, she said. It’s helped her regain a sense of self, she said.
“Katie [Durr, the art therapist at Magee Riverfront] introduced me to different things that I can do with my prosthetics,” Davis said. “I just think that being with this program has really been able to help me develop more ways to be more independent. I feel more free and relaxed when I’m in the art room with Katie. We figure out how to make things work. It helps me to explore more of myself.” Davis was one of the three artists honored with the Daren Dieter Excellence In Art award during Art Heals, a benefit held last Friday night at the Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Center City. She joined fellow artists Steven King and Jim Cottingham in receiving the honor.
Emceed by 6ABC Consumer Reporter Nydia Han, the Art Heals benefit took on the feel of an art gallery opening as participants nibbled on wine and cheese as they toured the program’s art rooms and learned about the art therapy program while speaking to the artists themselves.
The award is named for artist Daren Dieter, the son of former Philadelphia consumer advocate Lance Haver and his wife Lisa, an education advocate. Dieter was shot while getting food from a bar in West Oak Lane and was paralyzed from the neck down, He became a patient at Magee and was able to continue creating art through the organization’s art therapy program. Dieter died in 2011. Through art therapy, a part of Daren still lives on, Lisa Haver said.
“What we’ve learned is even though we lost Daren, we still have his artwork,” Lisa Haver said. “Art lives on. People are here, and then they’re not here, but art lives on.”
While the art therapy program is beneficial and has helped a lot of people since its inception, charity benefits like Art Heals and donations from foundations like the Honickman Foundation have kept the program going. The program isn’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or even private insurance.
Also, Pennsylvania has one of the lowest rates for Medicaid reimbursement, making programs like Art Therapy hard to find financial room for.
That’s not the way it should be, Lance Haver said. So, he’s trying to change that in the way he knows best: through advocacy.
“I’ve talked to [State Rep.] Ben Waxman, who represents this district, about this,” he said. “[Art therapy] shouldn’t be covered through charity. It should be covered as a true medical expense.”
Throughout the evening, attendees were able to place bids on artwork done by many of the artists in attendance through a silent auction.
For more information on the Art Therapy program at Magee, visit: https://mageerehab.jeffersonhealth.org/about-us/care-team/art-therapy/
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