Taipei, May 30 (CNA) Hundreds of victims of spinal injuries demonstrated their enormous perseverance and shared their stories of overcoming adversity at a charity carnival Saturday.

The event, titled “Navigating Life — Wheelchair Experience and Charity Carnival, ” was held for the 10th consecutive year by the Taoyuan County-based non-profit Potential Development Center for Spinal Cord Sufferers, the Lin Yuh-chi Memorial Foundation of the Hung Kuo Group, the De Lin Institute of Technology and the Taiwan Jewelry Industry Association, to raise public awareness of the plight of the paralyzed. Continue Reading »

The FES Sport Day will bring competitors and visitors from across the world to Scotland to compete in various FES Sport events and to experience the latest research and development into FES technology. FES or Functional Electrical Stimulation is the technology that allows spinal cord injured individuals to independently exercise when previously their injury served as permanent obstacle to this.

Dr Derek Jones of Anatomical Concepts (UK) Ltd said: “The FES technology combined with motorised indoor and outdoor cycles or a rowing machine has been proven to offer new possibilities for spinal cord injured persons to make significant improvements to their general health, develop their cardiovascular fitness, build bone strength, and enjoy an athletic challenge. Continue Reading »

Rick Hansen event funds work in Stouffville

No one can fully comprehend what it’s like to live life with a spinal cord injury or be confined to a wheelchair.

Which is why Whitchurch-Stouffville is again playing host to the Rick Hansen Scotiabank Wheelchair Challenge. Continue Reading »

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It was the early 1980s, and Robb Dunfield, 19, was ready to celebrate the first night of summer with his friends in Vancouver’s Spanish Banks.

Looking for a high spot to watch a flotilla of tall ships in the dimming light, they climbed up to the third floor of a condo under construction, and were ready to settle into an unfinished balcony.

The two-by-four that was the railing, attached to the skeletal building by two nails, gave way as his two friends put their weight on it. Continue Reading »

Hal Hargrove Jr. had a decision to make, one that would affect him and those around him for the rest of his life.

After a devastating car accident in July 2007 that left the 17-year-old Claremont High School graduate in a wheelchair, Hargrove could either while away in bitterness and self pity or be perfect – he chose the latter.

For Hargrove, now 19, being perfect has little to do with perfection. Continue Reading »

Basketballs bounced, wheels turned and the whistle was blown for yesterday’s official kickoff of Barrie’s seventh annual Rick Hansen Wheels in Motion event.

The annual event, presented by Scotiabank, brings Canadians together to raise money and awareness to improve the quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries.

“The goal is to bring awareness to wheels in motion and to people with disabilities,” Drew Rigden, athlete ambassador for Parasport Ontario, said yesterday in Barrie. Continue Reading »

Frank Gardner, the BBC journalist who has spinal-cord injuries after being shot in Saudia Arabia, swaps tales of life in a wheelchair with our writer, who has the same condition

In 2005, my wife Penny watched a news item about the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who had suffered a spinal-cord injury after being shot by al-Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia. He was pictured standing in callipers and taking his first tentative steps. Penny was in the waiting area of the Royal London Hospital; I was in the operating theatre after falling from a tree in which I was working. I had broken my spine, leaving me paraplegic. Continue Reading »

The Mayfield Clinic and Spine Institute urges parents, camp counselors and coaches to remind young people that diving into shallow water can result in devastating and irreversible injuries to the spinal cord.

A life-changing injury can be sustained when the spinal cord, a bundle of nerves that runs down the back from the base of the brain to the waist, is damaged or severed by trauma. Continue Reading »

When Tom Bolewski suffered a serious spinal cord injury 16 months ago, his doctors told him he would live out the rest of his life as a quadriplegic in a nursing home.

On Monday, the 49-year-old former electrical contractor from Saugus hopes to take his first steps since the accident at the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon.

“I was told by several doctors that I would be driving a wheelchair with a straw (from my mouth),” says Bolewski. “I was told I would have permanent brain damage. Obviously, none of that is true.” Continue Reading »