C-5

A disabled mum achieved her dream of heliskiing and the magical moment was captured in an amazing video.

Janne Kouri raised a fist and rode his electric wheelchair through an arch of red, white and blue balloons set up between Georgetown’s Healy Gates on Wednesday, as dozens of friends and family members cheered his long-awaited arrival. When Kouri began creating the itinerary for his 2,900-mile, two-month ride to raise funds and awareness for people living with paralysis, a cross-country journey that began on March 11 at his home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., there was never a question it would end here.

“Georgetown has been a fantastic support and resource system for us, and it just lives in his heart every day,” said Kouri’s wife, Susan Moffat, who joined her husband in four cities during the ride and was waiting for him at the finish line. “At first I asked him, ‘Do you want to finish in New York?’ but it was always D.C., and it was always on the campus of Georgetown.”

BENTON, Ark.-A Benton mother not letting an injury stop her from reaching her goals.

Jen Goodwin suffered a spinal cord injury from a boating accident 11 years ago.

She has her dream job and enjoying life with her son Beckham!

Live To Roll – In this video I show how I hold a pen to write and I asked 5 other C5 – C6 quads to show how they do it as well. I can’t thank my friends enough for shooting their own little video clips!

What if paralyzed limbs could move using only the power of one’s thoughts? Borrowing a story line from the realm of science fiction, a team of researchers at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis—together with neurosurgeons and biomedical engineers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine—are using a brain-machine interface to make this once seemingly impossible feat a reality for victims of spinal cord injury (SCI). Seeking innovative ways to restore function after SCI is one of the central goals for The Miami Project, which was founded in 1985 and has grown to become one of the “crown jewels” of the Miller School of Medicine—and a model for other institutions developing centers for SCI research.

Interabled couples are sharing their love on social media following a “Dr. Phil” episode that aired on Tuesday in which Dr. Phil claimed that an able-bodied woman dating a disabled man “can be his lover or you can be his caregiver, but you can’t be both… It won’t work, 100 out of 100 times this won’t work.”

This journalist needed a voice-operated camera, but there was ‘nothing’ on the market. So he made her one

As a trapeze performer, Carolyn Pioro made flying and flipping through the air look easy. Movement, she once said, was her life.

That changed forever in September 2005. Pioro was training for a performance with a Toronto-based circus when a mid-air flip went terribly wrong. She fell 40 feet, landed badly in the safety net and severed her spinal cord.

The majority of people who suffer the partial or total loss of the hand’s motor skills report a drastic reduction in the quality of life due to the consequent inability to carry out many activities of daily life. Performing tasks often taken for granted, such as buttoning a shirt, using the phone, or grasping utensils for cooking or eating becomes frustrating or almost impossible due to reduced grip strength and poor motor control of the hand that afflicts these people.

A research team from Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, coordinated by Prof. Conor Walsh and led by Dr. Leonardo Cappello, has recently developed a wearable robotic system with the purpose of helping these people.

Two research participants living with traumatic, motor complete spinal cord injury are able to walk over ground thanks to epidural stimulation paired with daily locomotor training. In addition, these and two other participants achieved independent standing and trunk stability when using the stimulation and maintaining their mental focus.

The research, conducted at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at the University of Louisville, was published online early and will appear in the Sept. 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

After his physiotherapy ended, a quadriplegic created his own wall gym

Antonio Ramunno knew he shouldn’t have been out on his motorcycle, but it was such a beautiful night. It was almost four years ago. He said he was just ‘pissing around’, doing stuff he knew he shouldn’t.

That’s when he lost control of his bike and wiped out. When he woke up, the 46-year-old’s C-5 vertebrae was injured and he didn’t have any feeling below his chest.