By Dean Olsen - paramuspost.com
Within weeks of experimental stem-cell surgery Oct. 29 in Portugal, Jacki Rabon - paralyzed from the waist down after an auto accident two years ago - was standing and walking in Detroit.
But metal braces and an aggressive Rehabilitation program in Michigan, not restoration of sensation in her legs, were what helped the 18-year-old take steps she hadn't attempted since a rollover accident in August 2003.
It's too soon to know whether the $44,000 surgery, in which tissue from her nose was transplanted into the damaged section of her spinal cord, will bring back any feeling or control for Rabon, a former standout high school volleyball player from Waverly, Ill., a rural town of 1,300 people.
But she has returned to central Illinois grateful for a smooth surgery and for financial support from friends and strangers. She and her mother, Becki Rabon, 52, say they are prepared for the hard work and uncertainty ahead.
"Right now the future is rehab, one day at a time," Jacki said, sitting next to the EasyGlide exercise machine she uses an hour each day.
Jacki is soft-spoken and calm and doesn't appear to be impatient with her progress so far. Becki said her daughter has a quiet determination.
"That's why she has gotten so far," Becki said.
Dr. Steven Hinderer of the not-for-profit Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, who helped Jacki gain access to the surgery in Portugal, said her attitude will help over the months - perhaps years - it will take before the procedure's outcome is known.
"A girl like Jacki has her whole life before her," Hinderer said. "And heaven forbid that she would wonder, 'Was there an opportunity missed?'"
Rabon felt some intense soreness in her hips a few days after the surgery, a new sensation for her. That could have been a sign the stem-cell transplant was working, but Hinderer said the soreness more likely was a temporary side effect of the surgery, not regrowth.
"Real improvements are going to take a lot of time," Hinderer said.
Jacki and her mother, a nursing technician at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Ill., flew to Lisbon from St. Louis on Oct. 25. There, at Hospital de Egas Moniz, they met Dr. Carlos Lima, a Portuguese neurologist who pioneered the experimental surgery, known as olfactory mucosa transplantation.
