This post was started because of the idea that my wife, Deb, is on a mission to walk again, almost 17 years after a car accident rendered her paralyzed from the solar plexus down. I have shared some stories and history in order to establish why my wife's story is even blog-worthy. But I guess I can tell a tidbit of what's going on now to get to the goal of walking.

Obviously neither of us has ever been through the process of getting legs that have not been used on purpose in 17 years to function again. And given that the doctors have decided that its a lost cause, there isn't a lot of professional help insurance or government programs jumping in our direction. The biggest practical help has been the massotherapist, John, who showed us how Deb's leg muscles can be stimulated into responding to outside force. She has actually moved her foot on a couple of occasions, but nothing that has been sustained.

We have thought about this for ages: what can we do besides wishing and hoping that could give Deb real progress toward walking. Well one thing we've tried lately is encouraging (heck, anything that keeps us believing in this cause is encouraging, actually); I have been standing Deb up in the morning.

I always saw the melodramatic TV shows where a person who couldn't use their legs would be forced to drag themselves along a set of parallel bars for countless minutes while their "friend" shouted at them and told them not to give up, either pumping them up or pissing them off enough to drag their lifeless limbs just one more inch. Two weeks later, they're skipping out of the rehab center, thanking Dr. Welby for all he's done for them.

Sorry, I wish I could say that's how its going, but its not. What is happening is that, instead of picking Deb up every morning and placing her in her wheelchair, I grab her around the waist and hoist her up to her feet. At first I thought it was just a good way to give her some creative visualization, seeing herself in the mirror in all her 5' 11" glory, feeding her vision and her passion to walk again. This it did, but what we also found was that her legs actually tried to cooperate! I was nervous that her legs would either spasm and kick, or buckle at the slightest pressure. Neither was the case. Her legs would actually straighten for a moment (as they do when they spasm sometimes) and I found they could actually support maybe 10% of her weight (my uneducated guestimate) as she stood and pivoted into her chair! That first time we did it, we were so overjoyed we cried. We looked at each other as if for reassurance that the slight support her legs gave was actually real, not wishful thinking. It is real, her legs actually straighten and stiffen in response to being lifted up and share in holding her up. Its been about of week of this, and while that is way too soon to expect further progress, it definitely reinforces the idea that we are on to something.

Stay tuned folks...something wonderful is happening!!!