Functional Electrical Rehabilitation: Technological Restoration After Spinal Cord Injury

On one of my returns to California, I attended the "Disabilities Expo 88" at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the various marvels oftech­ nology for the wheelchair disabled were stair-climbing wheelchairs, self­ raising and lowering kitchen cabinetry, and even a completely accessible "dude ranch" experience. At the same time, as a guest of the Southern California Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, I was part of a small booth (among the more than two hundred exhibitors) in which we had spinal cord injured people up and walking with a lower­ extremity bracing system (the reciprocating gait orthosis) used at the PEERS Spinal Injury Program in Los Angeles. I had a young man, a C6/7 level quadriplegic, walking with electrical muscle stimulation and lower­ extremity bracing. The system is reviewed in Chapter 8 of this book. As these "disabled" persons walked erect and upright among their wheel­ chair bound colleagues and took long, confident strides past exhibits extol­ ling the latest technological virtues of yet another "new" wheelchair (Fig. 1), I reflected on the paradox of it all. What a majority of these paralyzed people W0re really looking for was an alteration oftheir disability so that they could more normally function (in an unaltered environment). What the great majority of the exhibitors were offering was an alteration of the environment so that they could more normally function (with an unaltered disability).