In the news

In their on continuing coverage of people with spinal cord injuries and the various treatment and therapy options that are available, the Detroit Free Press ran an article today about Charlie Parkhill, one of the co-founders of the Recovery Project where I do my therapy.

Use this link to read the article

In related news, the Recovery Project has their website up and running again. For those that are interested, you can read up on their philosphy and a little of what I do there. I submitted some information about myself for their Client Profiles section. Although I need to log a complaint, with either the person who transcribed my responses on to the site or the person who helped me fill out my questionnaire, because I think some of my answers have been paraphrased. Also, I’m apparently now a big fan of water sports. That's something I never knew before.

Link to The Recovery Project website

In a couple of weeks I'll be getting another crack at newsprint superstardom. A week and a half ago I sat down for a brief interview with the same reporter from today's article. My interview will be part of a larger story about people with varying degrees of SCI and I'll let you all know when that runs and where to find it.

Movie Review

Murderball (2005)
Rated R for language and sexual content
Runtime: 88 minutes

Yesterday I met with some friends to see the film Murderball. It’s a documentary that follows the story of 2004 United States wheelchair rugby team. This movie originally came to Ann Arbor over the summer and the Michigan Theater held a special screening of it again last night, but when the movie first came out I decided I didn’t really care to see it.

First of all, I wasn’t all that interested in wheelchair rugby by itself. There is a lot I do miss about playing sports, but I don’t think I necessarily want to get involved with sports if they’re just going to be a compromised version of something that I used to enjoy being able to do to its full extent. For example, I played intramural flag football while I attended the University of Michigan, but it was never as fun as playing an impromptu game of tackle football down at Elbel Field with my friends. This was mostly due to the fact that the over-abundance of rules in IM flag football restricting the contact between players removes aspects of football game play like determination, toughness, will, and hustle. Aspects of the game, which if you’re not necessarily blessed with great size and speed, still allow a person to be very competitive playing tackle football. Every time I hear someone comment that I can still enjoy doing the things I used to do, but that they just have to be done differently I have half a mind to say, “Well, then I’m not really doing what I used to do. Now I’m doing something different.” That’s kind of how I see a lot of adaptive activities. I played in a wheelchair football game a few weekends ago, but because of how distorted the game needed to be to facilitate the varying levels of ability of those involved (myself included), it wasn’t the game I used to enjoy being able to play.

Secondly, one of my other reservations about seeing Murderball is the fact that I’m already living this life. I equate it to a story a friend of mine told upon his return from basic training in the Army. Every so often, the recruits during basic training get to have a movie night. As he told it, a lot of these guys would suggest that the platoon should watch Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, or Saving Private Ryan. To which my buddy's reaction was something along the lines of, “Fellas, we’re IN the Army! We already know what it’s like to be in the Army. How about an escape from reality?” That’s how I felt about Murderball. I already know what life is like in a wheelchair. There wasn’t going to be anything in this film that would teach me something that I didn’t already know.

As it turns out Murderball is a very good movie. In terms of just simply being a documentary, Murderball is done well. The story of the team and their success is compelling, but it is the background information on the players as individuals with spinal cord injuries that I felt really drives the movie. If you’ve been following along with some of the previous postings I’ve written and found yourself with questions about spinal cord injuries this movie addresses a variety of issues that I or anybody else with a spinal cord injury deals with at some point. There were parts of some of the players’ stories that I closely identified with. Some parts that I found to be very emotional for me. It didn’t really make me want to get involved with wheelchair rugby at this point in time; although there were several players from a Michigan-based wheelchair rugby team answering questions about playing wheelchair rugby after the movie last night. I do think Murderball is worth your time and money. From what I’ve read it might be hard to find in theaters now, but its release to video and DVD is not too far off.

May stick to certain types of skin...

Here is some absolute ridiculousness I encountered today and another example of why functioning, flexible fingers and opposable thumbs was an excellent trait for our proto-simian ancestors to pass along to us down the evolutionary line.

I inadvertently super glued my mouth shut this morning.

Yeah, that's right.

What did you do today?

I have this lap desk that I often use while eating, making lunch, transporting objects around, what have you, and it has a plastic edging to keep things from sliding off of it and on to the floor. It is probably the most useful and used piece of adaptive equipment in my arsenal. The edging was something that we came up with when I was in occupational therapy, and it is not secured to the lap desk itself, just pressed and molded to the edge. Well, I broke that plastic edging off of it this morning. I knew that I needed to remedy this situation as soon as possible, because without the edging I could easily foresee future problems I didn’t want to deal with: the dropped lunch meat, spilled soup, broken dishware, crumbs everywhere. The list goes on and on. These are all things that had been avoided, for the most part, by modifying the lap desk in the first place, all those months ago now. Luckily, I had a couple of tubes of superglue, which I figured I could use to make the repairs. I had open up a new tube, however, to finish the job and that’s when things got exciting.

In what should normally be a very simple procedure, opening a new tube of superglue definitely has its possibilities for mishaps. This was something I felt extremely conscious of as I embarked on my task. The last thing I wanted was superglue all over my hands, pants, wheelchair, etc. Yet to get the tube open, you have to unscrew the applicator tip, puncture the foil seal covering the tube opening, and then screw the applicator tip and cap back on. For me, this means using my teeth to unscrew the cap to get the tube open, and using my mouth to squeeze the tube because I needed to free up my hands while gluing the edging back on the lap desk.

Somewhere in the midst of trying to puncture the foil to open the tube, I suddenly realized that the corner of my mouth was glued shut. I could also sense that some of the glue had gotten on my teeth. I'm not sure if any glue actually came out of the tube or if it was just the fumes from the glue that caused my lips to get stuck together, but regardless I was stuck.

Fortunately, even though superglue bonds instantly to skin, something about the conditions inside my mouth kept me from making, what I can only imagine to be a rather embarrassing trip to the emergency room. In fact, after a several swigs of water and a few goings over of my teeth with my thumbnail everything was back as it should be. I'm not endorsing poor dental hygiene, but I can only assume that the relative ease of my de-gluing is due to the fact that I had just finished breakfast, not yet brushed my teeth, and that a healthy layer of overnight plaque buildup and Life cereal residue prevented a super tight bond. Induced vomiting proved to not be necessary. For this, I am thankful.

Go, go gadget legs!

Yes, as of August 8th I’ve started using my new standing legs braces as an integral part of my rehab program. I go to therapy three times a week and at least two of the three days I’m doing some sort of work that gets my legs moving. The idea is that, even though I’m not yet able to move my leg on my own, moving my legs through the walking motion is very beneficial in keeping up muscle strength, bone density, blood circulation, hip and leg flexibility and so on, that doesn’t happen with me just sitting in my chair all the time. Also, it is believed that by doing the assisted walking we may be able to retrain or rewire my body to do the walking motion on its own.

So the new pictures I put up in the photo gallery show me doing some of those exercises. The first two (blurry) pictures are of me using the unweighted treadmill walking system. I get strapped into what is basically a parachute harness and then get suspended over a treadmill. My therapists can control how much weight is taken off of my legs and then they move my legs on the treadmill. My job is to try and stabilize my body from swinging back and forth too much, but the therapists end up doing most of the work. This exercise will often cause me to have muscle spasms that make my legs want to straighten out which the therapists have to work against. But after walking for a few minutes those spasms tend to go away and I usually get about twenty to thirty minutes of walking done.

The rest of the new photos are from the first time using my new leg braces. They don’t necessarily look like it, but they do indeed cost $14,000. They’re custom molded to my legs, made from carbon fiber, and contain a special German-engineered knee joint that, according to the orthodist, is what makes them so special. In days of yore, a standing leg brace could be set in two positions, unlocked at the knee for sitting, and locked for standing. My braces, because of this new knee joint can be set in those two positions, but also in a third setting that allows the brace to lock and unlock based on the position of the leg. So, for instance, if I’m wearing my braces on the unweighted treadmill they will lock as my leg swings forward through the walking motion so that I can bear weight on that leg. As my leg swings back the knee joint unlocks at a certain angle to allow the knee to bend so my leg can be brought forward again. At least that’s how they’re supposed to work. We’re still working the kinks out on that one.

In the pictures of me with my braces on, besides noticing what a tall drink of water I am and that I really needed a hair cut, you’ll see that the braces are always locked. This is because all of my weight is being supported by my legs. The walker I’m using is designed to help me stabilize my upper body, so it has arm supports, bracing in the front and back to help keep my waist secure, and a sling-like seat, but the braces allow me to stand completely upright. What I’m doing in the pictures is shifting my weight from side to side to allow my therapists to move my feet forward. In time, as I get more trunk control and stability back, the plan is that I’ll be able to use my torso to swing my legs forward on my own.