Doing Rehab in Her Work Boots: How One Deputy Got Her Body, and Her Career, Back

Elizabeth McNally is doing her physical therapy in police-issue work boots, because when she walks out of Mount Sinai Medical Center, she intends to walk back into uniform. She finished the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office academy, and she was supposed to be in field training. Instead, she is five weeks into inpatient rehabilitation, recovering from surgery to remove a grape-sized tumor from her thoracic spine.

“I am going to fight as hard as possible to recover, so I can return to work,” she said. “Dr. Penumaka believes that I will. And honestly? I believe it too.”

Elizabeth came to law enforcement the long way. Years with the Department of Corrections, then probation, then the records department for Monroe County. When her supervisor pushed her toward the academy, she was a two-time cancer survivor in her fifties, ready to earn the green shirt.

The symptoms started in 2022: back pain, numbness in her feet, and a body that stopped feeling like her own. She was managing a type 2 diabetes diagnosis at the same time. For years, her pain was treated through chiropractic care and spinal injections, and she pushed through.

By spring of 2026, the symptoms had escalated in ways she could no longer explain away. An emergency MRI ordered by her care team in the Keys revealed a tumor on her thoracic spine, compressing her spinal cord. Left untreated, it could have caused paralysis.

Her physician reached out to Anirudh Penumaka, MD, MSc at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He responded almost immediately. Elizabeth flew to Miami the next morning.

“Her imaging showed a tumor pressing on the thoracic spinal cord, and the neurological deficits she was describing told us how advanced it had become,” Dr. Penumaka said. “With that kind of compression, patients can lose function quickly. We had a window, and we needed to use it.”

Within days, a thoracic surgeon at Mount Sinai placed platinum coils in her spine as navigational markers. Dr. Penumaka performed a thoracic laminectomy and removed the tumor. He told the team he could see the spinal cord visibly decompress. The pathology came back benign.

Elizabeth woke up and could feel her legs again. Before they wheeled her into the operating room, she made a request that has since become the line her care team retells to one another.

“I asked him, ‘Are you having a good day today? Because if it’s a good day for you in the operating room, it’s a great day for me in the recovery room.'”

What she meant was: she had decided to trust him completely. With Dr. Penumaka, she said, she felt seen.

“I had zero fear with him. Zero. He was meant for this. I hope he becomes a training surgeon, because he has a valuable gift to share.”

Five weeks in, Elizabeth has full bladder and bowel control. Sensation has returned. She is ambulating without assistance. She has needed almost no pain medication since the second day after surgery. Her physical therapist has her doing walking drills and stair work in her work boots, functional movements that mirror what she will need in field training. She is recovering faster than most patients her team has cared for.

“Her recovery has been faster and more complete than the average case at this stage,” Dr. Penumaka said. “That is partly the surgical result. Most of it is her drive.”

She is now home, in the Keys, satisfied with her experience.

“I get to come back with a much better physical body,” she said. “Running won’t hurt anymore. Falling won’t hurt anymore.” She paused. “If my recovery stopped right here, and this is as good as it got, I’m thrilled. Because of Dr. Penumaka, I am going to have an amazing recovery.”

The tumor, she said, is just a chapter. She is already writing the next one — in her work boots.

To learn more about Neuroscience at Mount Sinai Medical Center, click here.