The surgery, not yet allowed in the United States, has generated international interest among spinal-cord injury patients because of hopes that it will promote spinal-cord repair previously thought to be impossible.

All of Lima's approximately 80 patients - half of them Americans - who have undergone the surgery in Portugal since summer 2002 have reported some gains in sensation, and about 5 percent say they have better feeling in their bladders and bowels, Hinderer said. But no one is walking without braces, and it's not clear if the improvements were related to the surgery.

"Even though we don't see dramatic Motor function yet, and we don't know if we will," Hinderer said, "clearly there has been improvement in sensation in a number of areas of the body that had either no or poor sensation."

Lima hasn't yet published any of his results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, although the first article is expected this year in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine.

The Rabon family heard about the surgery through a television special on Lima's work and his scientific association with Hinderer.

The surgery wasn't covered by the family's health insurance, provided by the employer of Ray Rabon, Jacki's father and Becki's husband, but fund-raisers generated about $50,000 for Jacki.

Jacki said she wasn't nervous until she woke up in her hospital bed the day before the surgery. She cried when she was wheeled into the operating room, she said. The nurses with her stroked her face and tried to reassure her with words she didn't understand. They were crying with her, Jacki said. Then she lost consciousness.

Outside the operating room, Becki was nervous even though she had educated herself on the procedure. She was thinking: "I'm in a different country. How do I know what they're going to do to her in that room when I'm not around?"

Surgery lasted almost eight hours, longer than expected, because the surgical team found that Jacki's spinal cord injury was slightly lower than originally thought.

The surgeons removed tissue from the olfactory bulb through tubes inserted in both nostrils. The tissue is thought to contain stem cells - cells that can grow and multiply into an array of more specialized cells.

The tissue was inserted into the 4-centimeter gap in Jacki's spinal cord caused by the injury. Based on animal studies, Lima and other researchers believe the tissue can change, over time, into nerve cells and promote new spinal-cord pathways.

Becki Rabon said Lima told her the surgery went well.