Community Collaboration to Beat the Odds!

“I had the pleasure of working with Michael W. two times from the fall of 2023 to the spring/summer of 2024. His story is one of dedication, perseverance, and courage to beat the odds. He sustained a cervical spinal cord injury while working overseas as the result of a powerlifting accident. Due to the severity of his injury, he underwent multiple surgeries to stabilize in attempt to reduce injury to his spinal cord. As a result, he required a prolonged hospital course for medical intervention and comprehensive rehabilitation. He was initially classified as an ASIA A spinal cord injury with quadriplegia and told his chances for returning to ambulatory level was minimal.

Rehab Without Walls began our services with Michael in the fall of 2023. His team was comprised of myself, Lacey Campbell as his occupational therapist, physical therapist Tony Zinnah, and social worker Brandi Washington. Initially, he was wheelchair bound needing two-person assistance for standing, assistance with transfers, and assistance for all self-care tasks. We could see, early in the process, that Michael was very determined to exceed all expectations. The only expectations that he focused on were the ones he had for himself, to get out of the wheelchair and return to the gym!

We began to see more and more movement in his lower body which resulted in improving ability to assist with sit-stand transitions and even progressing to take a few steps with maximal assistance from his therapy team. During follow up appointments with his neurology team, he was upgraded from ASIA A to ASIA C due to his considerable progression in motor/sensory recovery. We had the pleasure of introducing Michael to the wonderful people at Neuro Fitness foundation to facilitate his ability to reintegrate to the fitness world in a safe space. He transitioned to a  community day neuro program in Dallas, TX outpatient SCI max program the end of 2023 for intensive day rehab. We resumed services in March of 2024. By this time, he was performing self-care tasks at supervision level, standing to a walker level, and planning to begin his program with Adaptive Training Foundation (ATF).

I was able to attend his orientation with Adaptive Training Foundation. I saw a light in him that day! He had found his people. He was able to navigate a grueling 6–8-week course with ATF while working with us for therapy multiple times per week making significant functional gains and pushing through soreness and muscle pain to his shoulders without complaints. He was able to help mentor a peer also in the Rehab Without Walls program. By the end of our time together, Mike had accomplished so many of his goals including resumption of working out in community gym multiple times per week, return to cooking from standing position, he was participating with driver rehab and demonstrating ability to drive, and had ascended 76 steps in a football stadium with the assistance of Tony and myself. At our time of discharge, Michael was preparing to start back to college for his fall semester. The sky is the limit for this amazing young man!”

– Lacey Campbell, OT/L, MOT, Occupational Therapist