The real story on this quadriplegic who regained his ability to walk is the program he created to do that

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I found this clip via Instapundit, who linked the blog of an old friend of the man being profiled, Mark Stephan.

Stephan is a successful businessman who also ran marathons and participated in triathlons. He became quadriplegic due to injuries from a bicycling accident on Aug. 11, 2007. NBC is playing the “inspiration” angle.

Actually, what Stephan’s success in overcoming quadriplegia reveals is the scandalous way paralyzed people are abandoned in our healthcare system and what we can do to ensure better outcomes and even regained abilities by using his successful rehabilitation program as a model.

(Background for any new gentle readers: my late life partner of over 20 years had multiple sclerosis and we met when she could still limp two blocks. She was quadriplegic due to the MS the last 10 years of her life and paralyzed from the chest down for two more years before that. So I participated in the full range of rehab care for people with mobility impairments and I know what it is like to live with quadriplegia since I was the one providing her care and lifting and transferring her. We were lucky enough for her to receive care at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C., and the therapists there trained me, so I do know what passes for top care in the U.S.)

The biggest scandal and most heinous atrocity about paralyzing injuries or illnesses in the United States is that the patients are so neglected during their acute care hospitalizations that their muscles and tendons contract and harden irreversibly. It only takes a few days of failure to provide proper range-of-motion exercises for their hands to look like they were wax and got too close to a flame and their fingers are melting and for their feet to be pulled into a permanent point. This means that when they are transferred to a rehabilitation hospital, the neglect during acute care is actually responsible for a significant percentage of their disability AND IT DID NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN!!!!!

I did range-of-motion exercises for Margaret at least once a day, and usually more, for about 16 years. It did help that after she became paralyzed, she was prescribed Baclofen, which reduces contractures. I worked so hard on this because it made Margaret more comfortable, it kept her ankles and calves flexible — so her feet would rest flat on the floor instead of rigidly pointing down — so I could transfer her (from bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to car, car to wheelchair) by pulling her into a standing position and pivoting. Range-0f-motion exercises also ensured her knees and hip joints stayed flexible enough so she could continue to receive gynecological exams.

So, what Mark Stephan has done is not inspirational, IT IS FREAKING MEDICAL HISTORY because he has shown what works to rehabilitate some paralyzing injuries. AND HE HAS SHOWN WHAT CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WHEN REHAB STARTS IMMEDIATELY and acute care neglect is not allowed to create new, irreversible injuries due to contractures.

Update, 12/11/09, Sat.: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and thank you, Prof. Reynolds, for the link. I just want to emphasize there are two important points to this story. First, we could save a LOT more abilities for people with paralyzing injuries or illnesses with the knowledge that physiatrists, physical therapists and occupational therapists have RIGHT NOW but the current system has too great a division between acute care and rehab care, including the fact that they are applied sequentially instead of simultaneously because often they are at different physical locations.

That is, the paralyzed person gets treated for their injury/illness in the acute care hospital, but little or nothing is done to preserve range-of-motion and the flexibility of muscles and tendons. Contractures can become irreversible in just a few days, or require surgery that could have been avoided with proper and immediate range-of-motion therapy (and sometimes splinting). So when the patient is transferred to the rehab hospital with permanent contractures from neglect in the acute care hospital, there may be little or nothing the physical therapist and occupational therapists can do to help them  recover the abilities that were lost DURING THEIR ACUTE CARE.

Second, the program that Mark Stephan put together to recover his independence and walking was successful and should be used as a model and studied to find out why it worked.

Determined people ARE able to make breakthroughs like this. It was not doctors who created the field of physical therapy and physiatry (rehab medicine) — it was a nurse in the outback of Australia using her own common sense to fight epidemics of polio and restore the ability of polio survivors to walk again. Her name was Sister Elizabeth Kinney (the British call nurses “Sister” — there is a wonderful biopic called “Sister Kenny,” with Rosalind Russell playing the title role). And what was it do you suppose that resulted in permanent loss of the ability to walk, which she learned how to prevent or even reverse so that many of HER patients regained the ability to walk?

Contractures.

P.S.

In cases of brain injury or atrophy, talk to the doctors about heterotopic ossification. Range-of-motion exercises do not prevent this condition.

Palin pwns Shatner

Alaska’s NBC station KTUU:

HOLLYWOOD — Former Gov. Sarah Palin made a surprise appearance on “The Tonight Show” Friday to poke fun at actor William Shatner, who has repeatedly lampooned Palin’s speaking and writing styles.

Shatner has shown up on “Tonight” several times since it premiered in June with Conan O’Brien as the host to read various Palin missives — from her resignation speech to Tweets to passages from “Going Rogue” — in the style of a beat poet.

He did so again Friday, only this time Palin emerged from backstage after he finished to return the favor, reading excerpts from Shatner’s autobiography.

Serenade to Music

Gentle readers, you’re the best! I am grateful to you with all my heart for your loving and compassionate condolences. Thank you!

This post is my way of easing back into the saddle.

“Serenade to Music” by Ralph Vaughn Williams is one of my top five favorite musical compositions. I first heard it in 1970 or ’71 when I played bassoon with Maryland Symphonette, a group of adult musicians from the Baltimore area, conducted by Angelo Gatto. We rehearsed and performed at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University).

Mr. Gatto also conducted a regional group for talented high school musicians, to which I also belonged. I think we were called the Maryland Youth Symphony — that group rehearsed at St. Ignatius Church on St. Paul Street in Baltimore, near the Washington Monument and Peabody Conservatory. With that group I played two other compositions that are among my favorites: “Capriccio Espagnol” by Rimsky-Korsakov and “Symphony Espagnole” by Lalo.

Anyway, back to “Serenade to Music” — first, there is something about music from the 1930’s: haunting, poignant harmonies like no other era, which touch me deeply. Stirring, exalting, celestial — these are some of the words that describe this music for me.

The lyrics are taken from “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb that thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
Music! Hark!
It is the music of the house.
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Silence bestows that virtue on it.
How many things by season season’d are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awak’d.
Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb that thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
Music! Hark!
It is the music of the house.
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Silence bestows that virtue on it.
How many things by season season’d are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awak’d.
Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

I remember you — in memory of Margaret Ardussi

In memory of Margaret Ardussi (June 1, 1941 to Dec. 7, 2004), my late life partner of over 20 years.

Blogging is going to be light for a few days.

Margaret Ardussi (left) and Cynthia Yockey, our first Christmas, 1984. Margaret had multiple sclerosis and this is one of the last photos taken of her standing.
Margaret Ardussi (left) and Cynthia Yockey, our first Christmas, 1984. Margaret had multiple sclerosis and this is one of the last photos taken of her standing.
Margaret and Cynthia with a cake my father brought for our twentieth anniversary on Sept. 25, 2004, when Margaret was dying and at home with me under hospice care.
Margaret and me with a cake my father brought for our twentieth anniversary on Sept. 25, 2004, when Margaret was dying and at home with me under hospice care.

Frank Ifield, “I Remember You”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RhMoC6kjMQ

Slim Whitman, introduced by Andy Kaufman (who was a TM teacher like Margaret):

Gen. McChrystal, Obama is behind you in Afghanistan 75 percent

As Iowahawk reports:

Anyhoo, after receiving General McChrystal’s request, I carefully reviewed and focus tested it with some of the top military strategists of DailyKos and HuffingtonPost. As an alternative, they suggested sending a special force of 200 diversity-trained surrender consultants. After several months of careful deliberation, polling, and strategic golfing, I told the General I would provide him a force of 30,000, which is fully 75% of a 110% commitment.

Jon Stewart says, 'Poor Al Gore — global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented'

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My father told me all along that global warming was a hoax, but did I listen? Not until last fall when I did more reading. I studied enough geology in college to know we have long warming and cooling cycles anyway, but finally I had to admit that sunspots and ocean currents have more to do with the earth’s temperature than human activity.

Since then, the more I look at altruistic and idealistic causes embraced by the Left, the more I see the Animal Farm paradigm: the idealists and their positive cause will be deceived and hijacked by charming, plausible sociopaths who then appropriate the efforts, money and power of the idealists to their own ends. So what started out as a movement to make our air and water clean was hijacked for its usefulness in thwarting capitalism and enriching both the small cabal of scientists who got grants for “global warming” research and the brokers in carbon credits.

Click the link in the quotes if you aren’t familiar with the allusion in Big Hollywood’s “If I’ve lost (name of opinion leader), I’ve lost (name of cause)” headline.

H/T Instapundit and Big Hollywood. Michelle Malkin has a comprehensive, yet concise, take-down of global warming and the recent revelation of e-mails showing that it is a deliberate hoax.

Meredith Baxter of 'Family Ties' comes out as a lesbian

I first spotted this in the headlines at conservative lesbian Tammy Bruce’s blog. And I just added the tag, “There IS a God.”

Seriously, my heart is singing and I’m walking on air. And she is absolutely correct about what will ultimately win equality for homosexuals.

H/T also to Memeorandum.

Update, 12/2/09, Wed.: Several hours after posting this the thought came to me that I took for granted that my gentle readers would know something that it now occurs to me I can’t count on them knowing: Meredith Baxter was not straight for most of her life through three husbands and bearing five children and then suddenly somehow she was overwhelmed with teh gay and became a lesbian in her fifties. No — she was a lesbian all along, but it took her awhile to work that out and get the courage to be herself. Also, as an actress, she may have felt, or been advised, that being openly lesbian would have harmed her career. Because coming out and being openly lesbian does change your relationships — and can cost you your family, home and career — it takes a lot of self-confidence and courage. It is not unusual for women not to have the needed inner and outer circumstances to be openly lesbian until their thirties or later. Actress Kelly McGillis is another example of a woman who did not come out as a lesbian until later in life.

Remembering my friend, Alan Scherr, murdered in the Mumbai massacre, and explaining how to use the Maharishi Effect to kill hate

Left to right: Kia, Naomi and Alan Scherr.
Left to right: Kia, Naomi and Alan Scherr.

Today is my debut at Newsreal, the blog magazine founded by David Horowitz to expose bias in the media and fight totalitarianism in all its forms. My first post there begins as follows:

A year ago, on November 26, my friend, Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter Naomi, 13, were murdered in the restaurant of the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai by one of the 10 Islamic terrorists conducting attacks at several carefully selected locations. Over 200 persons were murdered and more than 308 wounded in the attacks, which lasted from Nov. 26 to Nov. 29.

Two television documentaries recently commemorated the attacks: HBO’s “Terror in Mumbai,” narrated by Fareed Zakaria; and PBS’s “Mumbai Massacre,” which is an episode of the series, “Secrets of the Dead.” I have to admit, I could not bear to watch them.

But, as a writer in the political opinion niche, I know that one of the reasons you seek to be the one who tells a story is to assemble the evidence and craft a narrative that provides the conclusions you reach with the emotional and logical foundation for their acceptance — and to defeat or crowd out alternatives.

Read the rest here — I conclude my piece by introducing the Maharishi Effect to the marketplace of ideas of how to fight terrorism. I do not know of any other writer who is explaining the use of this technology, which is unique because it has been demonstrated scientifically to work to reduce acts of war and indicators of social negativity such as crime, sickness and accidents; it does not require any belief or faith to work; and it works with as few as one percent, or even as few as the square root of one percent, of a population applying the technology regularly.

'Please fire Kathleen Parker'

Dear Stacy asks today, “Is Kathleen Parker’s evil under-rated?” and provides his 2009 Evil Top 10 rankings.

First — regarding Kathleen Parker: yes, Stacy. Yes, it is. My headline has quotes because one of the very first indications to me that I was becoming a fiscal conservative was that after one of her more egregious columns — probably an attack on Sarah Palin — I wrote those words in an e-mail to the editors of National Review Online explaining why I thought they should fire Parker’s ass forthwith and that if a liberal Democrat lesbian was explaining this to them it was something they take very seriously, by which I meant, “Do immediately.”

They didn’t, and a few months ago I was mentioning this to a friend who said that she owes her position at National Review to her wealthy husband’s generosity. Gentle and Better Informed Readers, is that true? Did Parker, um, how should I put this — sleep her way to prominence? As a conservative, does Parker hate women who have not ascended in their profession the old-fashioned way, to wit, on their backs? Is that the real reason she hates Sarah Palin, who has overcome amazing obstacles and vanquished powerful enemies by dint of her own efforts — a hatred that surely has only been intensified by Gov. Palin’s new wealth as an author and her proven ability to pwn the president of the United States, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid FROM FACEBOOK?

(BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

Anyway, back to Stacy’s list: mostly I agree, but I think the number 2 slot should be considered a wild card, to allow for customization. I nominate Obama — he is destroying the U.S. as a capitalistic democratic republic.

As for number 3, it’s not a tie because Charles Johnson is now effectively working WITH Osama bin Laden. However, since the precedent of a tie has been established, I move to have the number 5 slot be a tie between Fidel and Raul Castro and Kim Jung Il in order to open up the number 7 slot for Oprah Winfrey, who is demonstrably more evil than Charles Manson because she used her public platform and our trust to choose Obama as president, while number 8, Charles Manson, has been restricted to a considerably smaller field of influence for decades now due to his unfortunate incarceration.

In fact, I move to bump Manson in favor of the leaders of the victim identity, race-baiting, capitalism destruction and totalitarian-hugging industries: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Donna Brazile, La Raza, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Naomi Wolf, Arianna Huffington, ACORN leader Bertha Lewis and ACORN founder Wade Rathke, global warming hoax-monger and profiteer Al Gore, the scientists spearheading the global warming hoax at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, science czar John Holdren, and the editors and publishers of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and pretty much everyone at MSNBC and CNN. What? Liberals LOVE diversity and it was their idea that self-esteem comes from praise rather than achievement — they would be offended if just one person were nominated in this slot. Everybody gets a ribbon just for showing up.

Well, well, well, this is a surprise — Maureen Dowd still does not make the cut. I hate when that happens.

So, gentle readers, I would love it if you compare our nominations and share your own.

P.S.

For heaven’s sake, do not confuse Kathleen Parker with NRO editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, since they both write for National Review Online. Ms. Lopez took quite the e-mail flaming last year from people who were angry with Kathleen Parker but too lazy to make certain they were writing to the correct target of their wrath.

'Still Life' at the Penguin Cafe

In the late spring of 2004 I was driving and listening to the radio when the most amazing music came on. I got to my destination and just stayed in the car for at least 20 more minutes to hear it all the way through and get the name. It was “‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Cafe” by the late Simon Jeffes.

My favorite part starts at about 3:55 when the chimpanzee in the gold top hat starts to dance. I never saw the ballet until tonight, so I had to imagine my own scenes for the music. That part sounded so filled with joy and personality and humor that it always seemed like the essence of a Gay Pride march to me. After Margaret was diagnosed as dying in September 2004 and came home to be with me under hospice care, I started almost every day by dancing and clowning to this music for her, which she loved. (Margaret is the only person who ever saw me clown around for laughs. She made my heart feel so light and happy that it was easy to do for her.)

Blogging will be light this weekend. I am working on a project that will require several days of focused attention. But let me know if you enjoy the music — other parts of the ballet seems dark to me, so I’m glad I only knew this until now as music: