Hello Friends. It’s been seven and a half months since Mike’s riding accident that left him paralyzed with a spinal cord injury. After completing 2 months at Spaulding Rehab Hospital in Boston we returned home to Vermont. The transition from round the clock care by a large staff to home with just me as his caretaker 24/7 has been very difficult.

When we returned home he was working very hard on bed mobility, which is being able to use your upper body to reposition yourself. If the body remains in one position too long a pressure wound will be created. These are so serious that it is a cause of death in spinal cord injury victims. Your body turns naturally when you sleep to avoid pressure but Mike requires turning every few hours all night long to avoid these wounds. He is more able now to turn himself, but we have been privately paying for overnight help for several months. I am devoting all of my time to caring for Mike 12 hours a day, 7 days per week. One of our newer goals has been to hire help for a few hours a day, twice per week to give me respite. Needless to say, it has been a challenge to find the right people to do these jobs.

Mike has been working very hard in physical and occupational therapies but it is a long, slow road. The key to improving the quality of both our lives is getting Mike to be more independent. He is unable to walk and using his hands is extremely limited. Think for a second how limiting that would be for you. You would require round the clock assistance with every task. While the UVM Medical Rehab department is good, they lack much of the equipment available at top treatment hospitals like Spaulding. Mike and I are always researching different treatment protocols, recovery theories and equipment options because our goal is not to accept this but to get him walking. As you can imagine this is a steep climb up a very long hill.

Mike has been researching a piece of equipment called an FES bike. FES stands for Functional Electrical Stimulation. Below is a quick summary.

https://restorative-therapies.com/for-patients-families/how-ifes-therapy-works/

We feel this piece of equipment is vital to Mike’s recovery and has been scientifically proven to not only aid in the recovery of SCI but improve the quality of life by reducing infections and hospital admissions.

As many of you who are close to us know, despite excellent home care, Mike has been admitted twice to the hospital since the end of December, once for Covid and another time recently for a serious UTI. The use of antibiotics also becomes problematic as other infections can pop up after the original course is complete. Infections and issues resulting from antibiotic use are common to spinal cord injury as many of the systems in your body keeping you healthy, are impaired with an SCI. These complicating conditions are the things no one tells you about but can often lead to death. The FES bike has been shown to reduce infections and hospitalizations.

To know Mike is to love Mike and I know I don’t need to tell you that. It is my #1 goal to get this man back on his feet and restore his quality of life. Because of that we are once again asking you to contribute to his recovery. Our insurance will not cover this piece of equipment and we believe it is absolutely vital to his successful recovery. If you are able to donate even a small amount, we are beyond thankful. If you are not, we ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers because you all have been the most important part of his recovery. We have kept ourselves sane by remembering that we are not alone and we are blessed beyond belief to have you all in our lives.