Showing posts with label spinal cord. Show all posts

Aboriginal Paralympic Champion and SCI BC Peer Mentor Gives Back On and Off the Court

By 

“You can complain about anything every single day of your life, or you can get out there and live your life.”

richard-peter-profileAn excited four year old. A schoolbus. A blind spot.
Richard Peter doesn’t remember his accident, but he’s read the court cases and shared his experience with rooms of schoolkids so many times that he more or less has the details down.
“I wanted to go play and have fun with all my friends, so I tried to run and catch up to the school bus. But the bus driver didn’t see me behind him, and he backed up right over me,” says Richard, 41, who grew up in a Cowichan reserve near the island town of Duncan. “The only reason I lived was that I fell into a puddle—he ran right over my chest.”
As with any spinal cord injury, the injury didn’t  just happen to Richard—it happened to his whole community. And, if the accident itself doesn’t stick out in Richard’s mind, the support he received afterwards does. Workers from Spinal Cord Injury BC (formerly the BC Paraplegic Association) visited the small boy in rehabilitation and later at his Duncan home, and helped his parents adapt to caring for a child in a wheelchair.
“A spinal cord injury doesn’t happen to one person—it happens to their whole community.”
His siblings, cousins, and friends continued to challenge Richard in a variety of sports. And, slowly, the small town of Duncan adjusted too, taking note of how inaccessible most public buildings were and even arranging for a wheelchair basketball demo team to play at Richard’s high school.
“A BCPA [ Spinal Cord Injury BC] worker got me one of my first sports chairs,” Richard says. “The first time I played wheelchair basketball, I didn’t even know that there was a Paralympics—I just enjoyed playing sports.”
When, as a teenager, he did finally try his hand at wheelchair sports, Richard, who was used to keeping up with his able-bodied cousins and friends, excelled. He drifted towards team sports, zeroed in on basketball, and soon found himself on the provincial, and then the national, team. “I liked participating in sports and travelling, and the big thing was that I was able to travel off of the island,” says Richard who, on the court, picked up the nickname Bear. “Once I made the provincial team and national team, I started travelling all over the world.”
Read the full article at Spinal Cord Injury BC
http://sci-bc.ca/peer-profiles/richard-peter/
Paralympic

How Technology is Aiding People Who Suffer from Paralysis

By: Paisley Hansen, writer at the Mobility Resource 


Paralysis is a problem that affects such a high number of people that it's nearly impossible to estimate how widespread it is. The many different forms of paralysis that exist make an already difficult problem harder to create solutions that can adequately help individuals afflicted with this condition to maintain more normal
lives.

Through rapid development of technology and research into mechanisms that cause paralysis to be a permanent condition, doctors have worked side­ by ­side with engineers to develop new and interesting ways to help paralyzed individuals regain their mobility, and to make their lives more normal.Some promising new technologies even hope to solve the problem of paralysis and allow patients to use the use of their legs and arms again. These inventions are helping people get around more easily and be more independent like these cars.

Let's explore these technologies in depth to understand how they're helping people stricken by paralysis to stay mobile.

1. Touch­Screen Computers and Tablets
One of the most difficult challenges for those suffering from paralysis that affects the upper extremities is the inability to write, draw or do many artistic activities. This leaves it nearly impossible to perform activities that would bring enjoyment and help the patient to cope with the social effects of paralysis.Tablets and other touch screen­enabled devices are being given to patients whom suffer from paralysis but still have a
limited amount of control to their hands or their mouth. By using a pointer, this enables them to take part in activities like digital painting, sketching, games and other activities that would otherwise be impossible to participate in.

2. Mobility Assisting Technology
For patients whom have been told that they will never walk again using their own legs, technology may allow
them to walk with the aid of a mechanical exoskeleton­like device that can be worn on their legs. The Ekso from Ekso Bionics is one such device provided as a mobility resource. Complex computers with movement algorithms designed to mimic the natural way that people walk work to make this technology move the patient's legs for them in tandem with the use of crutch­like support devices.The downside is that this technology is still in developmental stages and shares many of the same pitfalls that even military­grade exoskeletons share. In other words, they're heavy and require the user to carry a heavy battery backpack.

3. Spinal Implants
While no cure for paralysis currently exists, doctors and scientists are hard at work in trying to increase
their understanding of what causes the varying degrees of paralysis in the body. Their research has come far enough to create an implant that can help stimulate signal carrying along the spinal cord.The stimulator implant was first published in Brain research journal and active trials of the technology have been performed since April, 2014.While the implant helped 4 patients regain both feeling and voluntary movement in their lower extremities, the amount of strength that the patients have been able to recover has varied greatly. Not all can walk, and the reasons behind these varying degrees of success is what researchers plan to study next.That means until the exact cause and best method of treatment can be crafted, suffers of paralysis will need to make due with mobility technology that helps them to move rather than cures their condition.

4.Eye­Tracking Systems
Eye­tracking devices have been used in patients whom have paralysis that prevents all but movement in the eyes to occur. This allows patients to communicate by the simple movement of their eyes.Eye­tracking systems allow patients whom would normally be confined to their bodies to have some degree of influence over their surroundings.The drawback of this technology is that it tends to be more costly, which means that
it's only implemented in situations where other solutions won't work for the paralyzed individual.

5. Sip and Puff Switches
While nowhere near as astounding as the other technologies listed here, the sip and puff switch allows for paralyzed individuals to use their breath to control devices. These directions can be interpreted in ways that allow everything from the navigation of a computer to the movement of a motorized wheelchair.

Follow Paisley on twitter @PaisleyHansen

Read more at Sporkability.org 
accessible

Cannabis and Spinal Cord Injuries

Cannabis and Spinal Cord Injuries


Spinal cord injuries (SCI) are uncommon but can have permanent and devastating effects on one’s daily life and well-being. Still, research has a long way to go in developing effective SCI medications without side effects or addictive potential. As early as the 1970s, studies began documenting cannabis’ ability to fight pain and spasticity in patients with spinal cord injury. Today medical marijuana offers patients an alternative regimen that treats these relentless and unpleasant symptoms that can take such a toll on life quality.

Spinal Cord Injury Causes and Symptoms

Severe pain, stiffness, blood clots, insomnia, uncontrollable bladder and bowel, sexual dysfunction, anxiety, and depression are just some of the symptoms that plague the day-to-day of SCI patients. Spinal cord injuries are divided into two categories: complete and incomplete. At the “complete” level, the patient experiences total function loss below the location of injury. “Incomplete” refers to a partial loss of function with varying degrees of severity between patients.
Spinal cord injuries are caused by trauma to the spine, when dislodged bone fragment, ligaments, or disc material damage the spinal tissue on impact. Unlike back injuries, spinal cord injuries affect motor functions because axons (or extensions of nerve cells that carry messages to the brain) are destroyed by the fractured or compressed vertebrae...
Read the full article at Leafly 
(http://www.leafly.com/knowledge-center/medical-resources/cannabis-and-spinal-cord-injuries)
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