Diagnoses

Saad is a young man who just transitioned to our adult services from his school program in September 2017, and even though I try hard not to have favorites, Saad tests my resolve; he never fails to brighten my day. When Saad first arrived, he only had the wheelchair he came in. We put him in an old-style Rifton XL Pacer. Saad has cerebral palsy, involving a complex history with both his knees requiring...

Johnny Agar never considered himself an athlete. Born with cerebral palsy, he used a wheelchair, depended on others to care for him and took his first steps—23 total—at 11 years old. But sports was always part of his life—after all his dad had been a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. But father and son did not bond on the baseball diamond. Inspired by My Team Triumph, a program where able...

Image copyright ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY In preparing for a presentation on disability history I gave two weeks ago to Ministry of Health and Social Service officials in Russia, I stumbled across the research of John M. Starbuck, who examined the depiction of people with Down syndrome in ancient and medieval art. His entire paper is worth looking at but one item...

I was privileged to interview David the other day. We conversed by email since his speech is affected. David and his wife Ashley are survivors: their six-week-old son Jayvas died suddenly in 2009; one year later, at a 2010 New Year’s Eve celebration, David had a choking accident resulting in an anoxic brain injury. He was in a coma for a month and a half. Coming out of the coma at a rehab hospital...

Here is another story about a courageous man who is working to overcome his physical limitations through adaptive ambulation after a TBI. We were privileged to see Casey use his new Pacer XL Adult Gait Trainer for the first time during a recent visit Casey made to the Rifton Equipment facility, accompanied by his wife Jennifer. Physical disabilities did not stop Casey from achieving an upright position in...

Sean Carter is a fighter. After sustaining a traumatic brain injury, he completely lost the ability to walk, talk, or control anything but his index finger. He did not, however, lose hope for recovery. Sean believed he would walk again. Dr. Karen McCain agreed. She decided to get him ambulatory by getting him into an XL Pacer Adult Gait Trainer. She knew he needed to walk a lot more than weekly therapy...

Sean Carter’s plans didn’t include traumatic brain injury. A DWI truck accident, in which Sean was a passenger, changed all that. Besides the multiple fractures and internal injuries, Sean suffered a traumatic brain injury, completely losing the ability to walk, talk or control anything but his index finger. But Sean Carter doesn’t believe in giving up. His long road back—through...

  Sean Continues TBI Rehab towards Full Recovery Watch a followup video to Sean Carter Walks Again Part 1: A Journey through Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation, showing the progress Sean Carter made in just 12 months of rehabilitation, using Rifton’s XL Pacer Adult Gait Trainer to learn to walk again following an accident which left him with a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Read about his...