Shattered Nerves: How Science Is Solving Modern Medicine's Most Perplexing Problem

7 Looking Back at an Empty Wheelchair

∑ 7 Looking Back at an Empty Wheelchair Jennifer S. French walked down the aisle at her wedding. There is, of course, nothing unusual about that, unless one considers the fact that she is a quadriplegic. The story of Jennifer’s trip to the altar, made possible by the electrodes implanted in her legs, began on March 13, 1998—Friday the Thirteenth, to be exact. The moon was full, and French, then 26 years old and an accomplished snowboarder, was enjoying night boarding at a New England ski area with her boyfriend, and now husband, Tim. It was a beautiful evening for ‘‘spring skiing,’’ with the moonlight glistening o√ the snow, helping illuminate the floodlit trails. During this time of year, it is not unusual for the daytime warmth to melt the snow on the mountains into what skiers sometimes call ‘‘mashed potatoes.’’ Then, when the sun goes down, the cold night air freezes the snow on the mountain, turning it into sheets of ice. As French was negotiating an expert trail, she hit just such an ice patch, lost control, and skidded o√ a ledge, dropping 40 feet or so with her snowboard still firmly attached to her feet. She careened o√ a number of trees before coming to a stop. In those few seconds, Jennifer sustained a C7 incomplete spinal cord injury. In other words, she instantaneously became a quadriplegic. The spine is made up of twenty-four separate vertebrae, divided into the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions, in respective descending order. The Looking Back at an Empty Wheelchair 99 cervical section of the column is made up of the seven highest vertebrae, identified numerically from the neck down. If the nerves that run through the spinal cord are damaged, some level of paralysis and loss of sensation usually occurs below the damaged area. In French’s case, the seventh cervical vertebra (C7) was shoved up against her C6 vertebra, which damaged but did not completely sever her nerves at that point. Hence, her injury is referred to as incomplete. Some people with incomplete spinal cord injuries retain some mobility and sensation. Others lose one or the other, while some lose both. French fell into the latter category. Nonetheless, she said, ‘‘I was very fortunate that the ski patrol knew how to handle spinal cord injuries, and that I had methylprednisolone in my system within forty-five minutes of the injury.’’ When the nerves of the spinal cord experience a trauma, the body’s immune system deals with the damage through an inflammatory process that, paradoxically, can increase nerve damage. If administered soon after the trauma, methylprednisolone, an antiin flammatory and immunosuppressant steroid, can minimize the residual damage. The fact that French received the drug relatively soon after her injury may well have helped her in her fight to regain mobility. Originally from suburban Cleveland, French, a 5-foot, 6-inch, 125pound bundle of energy, was living in Manchester, New Hampshire, with Tim, an airline pilot, at the time of her accident. They settled there to enjoy the New England outdoor lifestyle. Both had been skiers before taking up snowboarding, and Jennifer considered herself a ‘‘pretty good snowboarder ,’’ able to negotiate even the most di≈cult trails on a mountain. Her love of the sport has led her to refuse to identify the mountain on which her accident occurred, nor has she sued the company that owns the ski resort, because she does not want to give it or the sport a bad name. ‘‘It’s simply that I love skiing, and I’ve always been very cognizant of the fact that ski resorts get bad publicity, and that there are some frivolous lawsuits,’’ she said. ‘‘It increases the price of everybody’s lift pass, so I’ve always refrained from saying what ski resort it was.’’ French has a personal interest in doing what she can to keep the price of lift tickets down, since a mere eight months after her injury, she was back on the slopes, this time using a ‘‘sit ski’’—a chair built low to the ground and 100 Shattered Nerves mounted on a single ski. Many a talented disabled person can negotiate di≈cult trails using this device with greater dexterity and speed than many able-bodied skiers. ‘‘I still love to ski. It’s a wonderful sport,’’ she said. ‘‘People need to understand that there’s personal risk with...