Unstoppable: How Meredith Koch of Medtronic Has Redefined Success While Navigating Society as an Adaptively Abled Paraplegic

As a part of our “Unstoppable” series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Meredith Koch.

Meredith is a principal clinical engineer for Medtronic’s Surgical Robotics business as well as a proud adaptively abled athlete and advocate. Prior to becoming paralyzed in 2015, Meredith spent a decade volunteering on ambulances as an emergency medical technician and had just landed her dream job as a Cardiac Rhythm Management clinical specialist with Medtronic. She now sits on the Advisory Board for the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital’s Professional Council and advocates for the numerous adaptive sports organizations that she credits for teaching her how to thrive after her accident.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! It is really an honor. Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

From a young age I was always active doing ballet, skiing with my family, and playing field hockey. In high school, I began volunteering on an ambulance in Darien, Conn. (USA), becoming an emergency medical technician (EMT) at age 16, driving the ambulance by age 17, and an advanced EMT by age 18. My experience volunteering with Darien EMS-Post 53 taught me many life lessons, none more important than the value of each person’s life and how quickly it can all change. Those four years on the ambulance cultivated a love for helping people, a passion for medical technology, and an unwavering knowledge that my purpose on this earth is to work in healthcare.

I continued to be active in college and grad school, experimenting with different styles of dance, such as swing and modern, skiing in Vermont with my family, and running half marathons. I was always happiest when in motion and it was the perfect complement to balance out the stress while obtaining my master’s degree in mechanical engineering or after starting my dream job as a Cardiac Rhythm Management clinical specialist with Medtronic in February 2015.

Do you feel comfortable sharing with us the story surrounding how you became disabled or became ill? What mental shift did you make to not let that “stop you”?

On Friday, May 29, 2015, I got forced into moving an 850-pound piano out of the back of a pickup truck. As it came out, gravity took over, and it slammed into my back, shattering my first lumbar vertebrae, fracturing my sternum, and paralyzing me from the waist down. Because of my decade of medical experience, I knew this accident would forever change my life. I remember having a conversation with God as I was getting paralyzed that this was not how my story was going to end; that my obituary was not going to read, “crushed to death by a piano.”

After screaming and ordering the others to call 9–1–1, I performed a rapid trauma assessment on myself and in realizing I could wiggle my fingers, I determined that I was only paralyzed from the waist down. I remember saying, “I’ve got this, I’m only a paraplegic. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to fight.” The others involved in moving the piano were in shock that I was still conscious and somehow relatively calm considering the circumstances.

My own rescue squad responded to the scene, the first of many miracles, and they taught me my first lesson in learning to let go and letting someone else take control (very reluctantly I might add as I was usually the one in control of a scene and making decisions). I was told in the Emergency Department that I likely would never walk again. After my eight-hour emergency surgery to correct the deformity in my spine and fuse my vertebrae both anteriorly and posteriorly, my spinal surgeon told me that I would be able to stand up and take some steps, but that I should not expect walking to be my primary form of mobility. From there, it was one miracle after another that got me through the acute phase of my spinal cord injury, including being within three miles of a level one trauma center, a spinal surgeon being in the hospital who was trained on the latest technology, and a world-class rehabilitation hospital a mere four hours away.

Can you tell our readers about the accomplishments you have been able to make despite your disability or illness?

When I look back on the past seven years, there are many things I am proud of, and the reasons vary with the part of my recovery journey that I was on at that time. Just fifteen weeks after my accident, I returned full-time to my pre-injury “dream job” as a Cardiac Rhythm Management clinical specialist at Medtronic. Considering I could not even drive a car again yet, I am proud that I never gave up on myself, my ability to adapt, and my calling to serve patients.

2018 was a big year for me. In March, I had the honor of giving a TEDx talk entitled “Why you should include the adaptively abled”, proving to myself and many others that perceptions are often misleading and inclusive design is critical to making the world a more accessible place. That summer I passed a rigorous exam to become an International Board of Heart Rhythm Examiners (IBHRE) Certified Cardiac Device Specialist, which in combination with my job performance, led to a promotion as a senior clinical specialist. These two work-related accomplishments proved to me that I was right to never give up. That I could adapt my approach to my job to become an exceptional clinical specialist and that my disability did not make me “less than” my able-bodied coworkers. In fact, the trifecta of an engineering degree, medical background, and paraplegia actually made me a better advocate for patients than my counterparts.

In May 2019, I made the U.S. Paralympic Swimming Emerging Team for my classification and held that spot for over a year until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I still haven’t quite gotten my sprinting speed back, but I still love to swim, and the pool is still where I feel the freest. I did not grow up as a competitive swimmer and I did not learn how to do flip turns or butterfly until after I was hurt, so to be able to make the Emerging Team time standard a mere four years after my accident was a huge accomplishment.

After changing jobs in June 2019 to be a senior clinical engineer for Medtronic’s Surgical Robotics business, I had the privilege to support the first gynecological procedures in the world performed with the Hugo™ robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) system in Panama City, Panama, in July 2020.† That trip and experience made all of the long nights and hard work I had put in to support the design and development of the Hugo™ RAS system for clinical use in gynecology procedures worth it and, yet again, showed me that my disability does not limit me from accomplishing anything I want to. It is simply a matter of deciding something is worth fighting for, building the team to work with me to achieve that goal, and then doing it, no matter what challenges present themselves.

This list of accomplishments would not be complete if I did not include personal milestones, which to an outsider might seem mundane, but to someone who thought their life had been turned upside down by a piano, mean the world to me. Things like learning how to carry my nephew up and down a flight of stairs; walking down the aisle at my wedding and then dancing the night away with my husband, Ryan; walking all over Savannah, Georgia, with my mother; and delivering numerous lectures to biomedical engineering classes or ski patrol classes, usually with my dad in attendance as my cheerleader. Ironically, I do not consider learning to walk again after my accident one of my main accomplishments — to me, that just highlights the miracle of my spinal cord not being severed by my shattered vertebrae and the result of a whole lot of grit in rehab to maximize what function was preserved when my spinal cord was compressed.

What advice would you give to other people who have disabilities or limitations?

I think it is essential for everyone, regardless of what disabilities or limitations they may or may not have, to figure out what brings them joy and what is worth fighting for. Simply put, do not let your disability or limitation stop you. Figure out what you want to accomplish, build an army to help you achieve that goal, and then fight to make it happen. Be stubborn in your pursuit of joy and lean into the power of resiliency. Actively seek out ways to enhance your adaptively abled skills and advocate for your needs and rights. Remember that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

There is no way I could list just one person who I am grateful towards in helping me get to where I am today. From the paramedics who saved my life and my spinal surgeon who excellently performed two difficult surgeries on me to the world-class care I received from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and my Medtronic managers and colleagues who have always supported and pushed me to be the best clinical specialist or engineer I can be, as well as adaptive sports organizations that taught me how much joy there is in life after injury and my amazing friends and family, they have all played a part in getting me to where I am today. The best way I can say thank you to each of them is to make good come out of the bad situation that happened to me and to lead my life in an empathetic and courageous fashion.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I recognized early on in my disability that my background as a mechanical engineer, a healthcare provider, and a patient who depends on multiple medical devices every day was a unique perspective. I decided to intentionally leverage each aspect of my background trifecta to bring new insights into the other aspects. When I was a clinical specialist, I tried to ensure each patient who received an implantable Medtronic pacemaker or defibrillator understood what the device was and, for some patients, how to accept the new reality of being dependent on a medical device.

As a healthcare provider, I turned my experience as a patient into educational material for Emergency Medical Service agencies and ski patrol groups by delivering lectures on spinal injuries, adaptive athletes, and patients with disabilities. I was recruited by a local physiatrist (a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor) to participate in medical school rotations and lectures on treating patients with disabilities.

After changing jobs at Medtronic to become a clinical engineer, I have tapped into my experiences in hospitals and as a former healthcare provider to ensure the clinical use environment and surgical procedures were accurately represented during the design of the Hugo™ RAS system. I have leveraged my lived experiences as an individual with a disability to promote the benefits of inclusive design and to share best practices of intentional accessibility. When I saw a need to improve representation and inclusion of employees impacted by disabilities at Medtronic, I applied to charter and found a Northeast U.S. chapter of our disability awareness employee resource group. Since launching in February 2021, the Northeast chapter has acquired 260 members, virtually educated over 1,200 people on disabilities and accessibility, launched monthly community conversations, and served as mentors to other chapters forming around the globe.

All in all, it has been about figuring out what I am uniquely good at, what brings me joy, and then utilizing both of those to the best of my ability to create and spread goodness throughout the world. I am proud of what I have accomplished so far, but I still have much I want to do, in my professional career at Medtronic, in my recreational adaptive athletic pursuits, and in my personal life.

Can you share “5 things I wish people understood or knew about people with physical limitations” and why.

1. Disabilities are not what not limit us, but rather society’s inaccessibility. If the entire world had ramps, electric doors, level entries to public transportation, adjustable height everything, ample adaptive technology, etc. people with physical limitations would be able to access everything that an individual without a physical limitation could. It is when we encounter bathroom stalls that are not large enough for our wheelchairs, stairs into a facility that we cannot navigate on crutches, or medical exam tables that are not height adjustable that our physical conditions actually limit us. Remove those barriers, and our limitations no longer limit what we can do in society — they just become another part of us.
2. We are experts in adapting, which means we are very creative in finding innovative solutions to challenges. Every day we face challenges that we have to figure out how to overcome. Whether that is how to get something off a high shelf in the grocery store when you use a wheelchair or how to move your infant from A to B when you use crutches or how to differentiate between shampoo and conditioner in the shower if you have a vision impairment, we figure out how to get done what needs to get done. We are masters at thinking outside of the box, at seeing things from angles that people without a physical limitation would not see, and at using what is available to get something done. Just ask my husband — he has seen me figure out how to climb in and out of a submarine, come up with some very creative poses in mini-golf to accommodate my crutch and feet in braces, and how I stand-dive off the blocks in swimming. Our expert adapting skills make us excellent job candidates and studies have shown that companies who hire employees with disabilities have higher revenues and innovate faster.
3. ‘Adaptively abled’ is a skill that everyone can and should acquire. When I first got hurt, I was so scared of the ‘disabled’ stereotype and how, at that time, it portrayed individuals with disabilities as helpless or not able to contribute to society. As an inpatient a few weeks after my accident, my physical therapists and recreational therapists took me out for a ride on an adaptive recumbent tricycle. While their intent was to get me outside into fresh air and let my legs try to function in a new environment, that was not the primary outcome of the day. As I began to cycle, I started to cry because I realized that I did not have to do everything the same way everyone else did, so long as I accomplished the same goal. That was the day when I began referring to myself as ‘adaptively abled’ and not ‘disabled’.
   So much of life is about your mindset and positioning yourself to tackle whatever challenge comes before you. By harnessing my ‘adaptively abled’ mindset, I have been able to fight back from numerous paraplegia related co-morbidities, a car accident, challenges at work, and periods of grief over what I ‘lost’ when I got paralyzed. Everyone, regardless of if they have a limitation or disability, should work on their ‘adaptively abled’ skills and leverage them the next time they are faced with a challenge or setback.
4. Our disabilities do not preclude us from leading independent, healthy, and fulfilling lives. Our lives are not worth less than someone without a physical limitation or disability. No matter how severe someone’s disability or physical limitation is, their life matters as much as someone without a physical limitation or disability. We deserve to be happy, receive great medical care, be loved, and be fulfilled. We are wives, husbands, and great parents — if anything, our kids grow up learning that adapting is an essential skill and that differences amongst people are a good and beautiful thing.
5. Don’t assume it’s OK to ask, “What happened to you?” While I usually speak of my accident as a cartoon-like event (#EndPianoViolence), that does not mean it is not emotionally painful to talk about what happened to me on May 29, 2015. There is a big difference between kindly asking someone if they need any assistance and insisting to know what happened to them.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”?

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming circumstances.” — Christopher Reeve

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this :-)

Kristin Duquette — I have always admired her advocacy work in the disability field, her resiliency to battle through/against barriers, and she was a Paralympic swimmer (my favorite adaptive sport!). I would love to meet her, learn from her, and channel some of her fierceness into my own advocacy work.

†The Medtronic Hugo™ RAS system is commercially available in certain geographies. Regulatory requirements of individual countries and regions will determine approval, clearance, or market availability. In the EU, the Hugo™ RAS system is CE marked. In the U.S., the Hugo™ system is an investigational device not for sale.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!