Taieri teenager Austen Haig remains positive, despite a serious spinal injury suffered in a club rugby match last month.
Haig (19) injured his spine while playing hooker for the Taieri Colts side at Peter Johnstone Park on April 16, and is now in Burwood Hospital, in Christchurch.
His prognosis is not clear yet, and his mother Helen says it could be six to eight weeks before the exact damage, and whether he can walk again, are known.
But good news had come over the past couple of days.
"Yesterday [Sunday] he managed to move his right foot, just wiggled it a bit. Then today they managed to get him out of bed and into a wheelchair for half an hour and that will be gradually increased this week," she said from Christchurch.
Haig, an accounting and chemistry student at the University of Otago, injured his back five minutes into the game, when he was hit at a breakdown.
An ambulance was called and Mrs Haig, who was not initially at the game, also came racing to see what had happened.
"It looked pretty awful. His body was lying there and his legs were all skewed off to the side."
Haig was taken to Dunedin Hospital where it was discovered he had dislocated his C6 vertebrae and his spinal cord had been crushed.
Through the use of weights on a halo brace, the dislocated vertebrae was put back in place at Dunedin Hospital. He was flown to Christchurch Hospital the next day, where his C5 and C6 vertebrae were fused together.
It would take another few weeks before the swelling of hids spinal cord came down, and there could be a clear prognosis.
"We're just at the waiting stage at the moment but the good thing is the spinal cord is still intact."
At
the moment, he was a tetraplegic but Helen Haig said her son's attitude
had been amazing and he kept everyone thinking positively.
"He mentioned to me how he is keeping everyone together. His attitude is just great, just thinking totally positive. There is none of that 'poor me' sort of stuff.
"He's telling me we can get through this. When he had the first operation the surgeon said that 90% of the recovery is in your head and he has remembered that."
ROBBINS, Ill. -- Rocky Clark sometimes dreams he's running track, racing around the oval as he once did, his heart pumping fast and his long legs a blur as he crossed the finish line.
Just thinking about it makes him smile.
Some nights, though, he has another recurring dream, this one pure fantasy. He sees himself in white shorts and track shoes, running again, then stopping, kneeling in prayer before a church door, somehow unable to make it inside.
When he awakens, Rocky Clark inhabits a world largely confined to four walls. Surrounding him are glass-encased autographed footballs and cherished memories of his glory days: Blue-and-gold ribbons. Trophies. And giant varsity letters from Eisenhower High School, his alma mater.
Clark can do little but swivel his head. He can't move his arms or legs. More than a decade ago, he was paralyzed from the neck down after being tackled in a high school football game. After nine months in rehab and a hospital bill approaching $1 million, he went home.
As a quadriplegic, his long-term prospects were slim. And over the years, there have been regular hospital stays and health scares – no surprise, considering Clark's fragile condition. He has just one working lung. His right lung is partially paralyzed; certain infections could kill him.
And yet Clark has endured. His doctor credits top-notch, round-the-clock home health care paid for by the school district's $5 million catastrophic health insurance policy. But that's run out, so the nurses and money are gone, replaced by his mother, growing financial pressures and a new sense of foreboding.
Rasul "Rocky" Clark beat the odds. And now he wonders if he's paying a price for his survival.
___
A week before his injury, Rocky Clark vowed to his mother that he'd strike it rich as an athlete one day and buy her a house.
Annette Clark remembers her son as an acrobatic kid who mastered back flips at age 7, ran too fast for a spanking and was always throwing balls and rocks – the inspiration of his nickname, bestowed upon him by an uncle. He took up track, football and baseball and excelled at all three, collecting ribbons, trophies and medals.
"I love awards," he now says. "It's a need thing."
On a warm September night in 2000 just four plays into the game, Clark – a high school junior and running back for Eisenhower's Cardinals – was grabbed by the shoulder and tackled. His head hit the ground. At first, he recalls, there was silence.
"When I started coming around, I heard a bunch of ringing," he says. "My whole body was vibrating, like a spring. I felt cold air. I tried to get up, but I couldn't."
Clark's neck had been broken in two places.
He spent about nine months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, wondering if his injury was some sort of cruel payback for something he had done in his 16 years.
"I said to myself ... `Maybe there was something I said I shouldn't have said. Maybe there was something I did that I shouldn't have done,'" he recalls. "I didn't do anybody wrong. I didn't get in trouble. ... I prayed every day. I didn't go to church all the time ... but I was good."
"Then," he says, pausing for a breath, "I realized things happen. Life doesn't always give us what we expect. I've got a spinal-cord injury, but there's nothing wrong with my brain. I've got a strong spirit and courage. You've just got to learn to deal with it."
Clark finished high school, donning cap and gown and having a friend wheel him across the stage so he could accept his diploma. He took some college courses, but a full-time schedule proved too difficult. (He'd like to return, but can't afford it.) He became a volunteer coach at Eisenhower, attending games.
All
of it was made possible by the care provided through the district's
insurance policy. And Clark says when the $5 million policy ran out
several months ago, he assumed it would be renewed.
But it was not.A plan to funnel a $3 surcharge from every moving traffic violation — an estimated $11 million a year — to a spinal cord injury research fund cleared a key California Assembly hurdle Tuesday and could be approved by lawmakers by the end of summer.
Assembly
Bill 190 — renewing the so-called Roman Reed law, named after a former
Chabot College football player paralyzed during a tackle — was approved
4-3 by the Assembly’s public safety committee. It will go to the
appropriations committee next month, then to the full Assembly and the
Senate.
“This is by far the biggest step. It will be another two months for everything to play out,” said Reed, who runs the Roman Reed Foundation in Fremont. “We’re going to pass this.”
State
legislators in 2000 agreed to fund spinal injury paralysis research
through the state’s general fund and renewed the legislation in 2005. In
all, the fund overseen by University of California, Irvine, has
provided $14.6 million over 10 years to 120 projects.A federal court has given the Obama administration the go-ahead to continue funding embryonic stem-cell research.
The controversial 2-1 decision Friday is a victory for supporters of federally funded testing for a range of diseases and illnesses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia lifted an injunction imposed last year by a federal judge, who said all embryonic stem-cell research at the National Institutes of Health amounted to destruction of embryos, in violation of congressional spending laws.
Legislation passed in 1996 law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars in the creation or destruction of human embryos "for research purposes." Private money had been used to gather batches of the developing cells at U.S.-run labs. The current administration had broken with the Bush White House and issued rules in 2009 permitting those cells to be reproduced in controlled conditions and for work on them to move forward.
Obama officials have been at odds with many members of Congress over whether the the NIH research actually causes an embryo's destruction, as prohibited by the Dickey-Wicker Act.
Two scientists had brought a lawsuit to block further research. But the three-judge panel concluded in its 21-page ruling, "the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded" the law does not ban research using embryonic stem cells.
The ruling does not deal with separate research on adult stem cells, which remains permissible under federal law. The plaintiffs have the option of now taking their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for review. The issue at this stage deals only with the lifting of the injunction allowing funding to continue for embryonic stem-cell research. The larger constitutional issues are still being debated at the district court level.
The government had argued that an extensive list of research projects outlined by the National Institutes of Health would have to be shelved if the court had not acted and granted a stay.
The field of embryonic stem-cell research has been highly controversial, because in most cases the research process involves destroying the embryo, typically four or five days old, after removing stem cells. These cells are then blank and can become any cell in the body.
Embryonic stem-cell research differs from other kinds of stem-cell research, which don't require embryos.
Some scientists believe embryonic stem cells could help treat many diseases and disabilities because of their potential to develop into many different cell types in the body.A wheelchair-bound passenger who was debarked from a charter cruise in February on Celebrity Century after declining to hire a nurse has responded to a number of claims levied by the cruise line and charter company.
James Keskeny, 66, of Pinckney, Mich., has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair. On Feb. 18, he was ordered off a Bare Necessities Tour & Travel nude charter cruise in Guadeloupe, where he had to pay $1,500 for travel arrangements home. Keskeny said he paid in excess of $4,000 for the cruise. The story was first reported by the Oakland Press, a Detroit area news outlet.
On Monday, Celebrity Cruises confirmed the details to Cruise Critic, saying in a statement that the debarkation was necessary because Keskeny needed help getting into and out of bed and using the bathroom (where he suffered a fall) — "special assistance above and beyond what is provided to our disabled or wheelchair-bound guests." Bare Necessities founder Nancy Teimann agreed that Keskeny's needs were extensive: "He needed help every time he had to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, every time he needed to take a bath."
On the third day of the cruise, Celebrity officials told Keskeny he would have to hire a private-duty nurse at his own expense if he wished to remain on the 10-night Southern Caribbean cruise. He declined and was debarked the next day. The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal by Chipotle Mexican Grill on Monday and left intact a federal appeals court ruling in San Francisco that said a nearly 4-foot barrier in a waiting line denied wheelchair users the right to see the food they were ordering.
The barrier "subjects disabled customers to a disadvantage that non-disabled customers do not suffer," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July in a case from San Diego County. The ruling came on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to treat disabled patrons equally and remove unnecessary obstacles.
Maurizio Antoninetti said in his lawsuit in 2005 that a 45-inch barrier at Chipotle restaurants in San Diego and Encinitas blocked his view of the counter, where customers can inspect each dish, choose their order and watch it being prepared.
Chipotle said it met wheelchair users' needs by bringing them spoonfuls of their preferred dish for inspection before ordering. But the appeals court said that doesn't match "the customer's personal participation in the selection and preparation of the food."
Haig (19) injured his spine while playing hooker for the Taieri Colts side at Peter Johnstone Park on April 16, and is now in Burwood Hospital, in Christchurch.
His prognosis is not clear yet, and his mother Helen says it could be six to eight weeks before the exact damage, and whether he can walk again, are known.
But good news had come over the past couple of days.
"Yesterday [Sunday] he managed to move his right foot, just wiggled it a bit. Then today they managed to get him out of bed and into a wheelchair for half an hour and that will be gradually increased this week," she said from Christchurch.
Haig, an accounting and chemistry student at the University of Otago, injured his back five minutes into the game, when he was hit at a breakdown.
An ambulance was called and Mrs Haig, who was not initially at the game, also came racing to see what had happened.
"It looked pretty awful. His body was lying there and his legs were all skewed off to the side."
Haig was taken to Dunedin Hospital where it was discovered he had dislocated his C6 vertebrae and his spinal cord had been crushed.
Through the use of weights on a halo brace, the dislocated vertebrae was put back in place at Dunedin Hospital. He was flown to Christchurch Hospital the next day, where his C5 and C6 vertebrae were fused together.
It would take another few weeks before the swelling of hids spinal cord came down, and there could be a clear prognosis.
"We're just at the waiting stage at the moment but the good thing is the spinal cord is still intact."
At
the moment, he was a tetraplegic but Helen Haig said her son's attitude
had been amazing and he kept everyone thinking positively."He mentioned to me how he is keeping everyone together. His attitude is just great, just thinking totally positive. There is none of that 'poor me' sort of stuff.
"He's telling me we can get through this. When he had the first operation the surgeon said that 90% of the recovery is in your head and he has remembered that."
ROBBINS, Ill. -- Rocky Clark sometimes dreams he's running track, racing around the oval as he once did, his heart pumping fast and his long legs a blur as he crossed the finish line.
Just thinking about it makes him smile.
Some nights, though, he has another recurring dream, this one pure fantasy. He sees himself in white shorts and track shoes, running again, then stopping, kneeling in prayer before a church door, somehow unable to make it inside.
When he awakens, Rocky Clark inhabits a world largely confined to four walls. Surrounding him are glass-encased autographed footballs and cherished memories of his glory days: Blue-and-gold ribbons. Trophies. And giant varsity letters from Eisenhower High School, his alma mater.
Clark can do little but swivel his head. He can't move his arms or legs. More than a decade ago, he was paralyzed from the neck down after being tackled in a high school football game. After nine months in rehab and a hospital bill approaching $1 million, he went home.
As a quadriplegic, his long-term prospects were slim. And over the years, there have been regular hospital stays and health scares – no surprise, considering Clark's fragile condition. He has just one working lung. His right lung is partially paralyzed; certain infections could kill him.
And yet Clark has endured. His doctor credits top-notch, round-the-clock home health care paid for by the school district's $5 million catastrophic health insurance policy. But that's run out, so the nurses and money are gone, replaced by his mother, growing financial pressures and a new sense of foreboding.
Rasul "Rocky" Clark beat the odds. And now he wonders if he's paying a price for his survival.
___
A week before his injury, Rocky Clark vowed to his mother that he'd strike it rich as an athlete one day and buy her a house.
Annette Clark remembers her son as an acrobatic kid who mastered back flips at age 7, ran too fast for a spanking and was always throwing balls and rocks – the inspiration of his nickname, bestowed upon him by an uncle. He took up track, football and baseball and excelled at all three, collecting ribbons, trophies and medals.
"I love awards," he now says. "It's a need thing."
On a warm September night in 2000 just four plays into the game, Clark – a high school junior and running back for Eisenhower's Cardinals – was grabbed by the shoulder and tackled. His head hit the ground. At first, he recalls, there was silence.
"When I started coming around, I heard a bunch of ringing," he says. "My whole body was vibrating, like a spring. I felt cold air. I tried to get up, but I couldn't."
Clark's neck had been broken in two places.
He spent about nine months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, wondering if his injury was some sort of cruel payback for something he had done in his 16 years.
"I said to myself ... `Maybe there was something I said I shouldn't have said. Maybe there was something I did that I shouldn't have done,'" he recalls. "I didn't do anybody wrong. I didn't get in trouble. ... I prayed every day. I didn't go to church all the time ... but I was good."
"Then," he says, pausing for a breath, "I realized things happen. Life doesn't always give us what we expect. I've got a spinal-cord injury, but there's nothing wrong with my brain. I've got a strong spirit and courage. You've just got to learn to deal with it."
Clark finished high school, donning cap and gown and having a friend wheel him across the stage so he could accept his diploma. He took some college courses, but a full-time schedule proved too difficult. (He'd like to return, but can't afford it.) He became a volunteer coach at Eisenhower, attending games.
All
of it was made possible by the care provided through the district's
insurance policy. And Clark says when the $5 million policy ran out
several months ago, he assumed it would be renewed.But it was not.A plan to funnel a $3 surcharge from every moving traffic violation — an estimated $11 million a year — to a spinal cord injury research fund cleared a key California Assembly hurdle Tuesday and could be approved by lawmakers by the end of summer.
“This is by far the biggest step. It will be another two months for everything to play out,” said Reed, who runs the Roman Reed Foundation in Fremont. “We’re going to pass this.”
State
legislators in 2000 agreed to fund spinal injury paralysis research
through the state’s general fund and renewed the legislation in 2005. In
all, the fund overseen by University of California, Irvine, has
provided $14.6 million over 10 years to 120 projects.A federal court has given the Obama administration the go-ahead to continue funding embryonic stem-cell research.The controversial 2-1 decision Friday is a victory for supporters of federally funded testing for a range of diseases and illnesses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia lifted an injunction imposed last year by a federal judge, who said all embryonic stem-cell research at the National Institutes of Health amounted to destruction of embryos, in violation of congressional spending laws.
Legislation passed in 1996 law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars in the creation or destruction of human embryos "for research purposes." Private money had been used to gather batches of the developing cells at U.S.-run labs. The current administration had broken with the Bush White House and issued rules in 2009 permitting those cells to be reproduced in controlled conditions and for work on them to move forward.
Obama officials have been at odds with many members of Congress over whether the the NIH research actually causes an embryo's destruction, as prohibited by the Dickey-Wicker Act.
Two scientists had brought a lawsuit to block further research. But the three-judge panel concluded in its 21-page ruling, "the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded" the law does not ban research using embryonic stem cells.
The ruling does not deal with separate research on adult stem cells, which remains permissible under federal law. The plaintiffs have the option of now taking their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for review. The issue at this stage deals only with the lifting of the injunction allowing funding to continue for embryonic stem-cell research. The larger constitutional issues are still being debated at the district court level.
The government had argued that an extensive list of research projects outlined by the National Institutes of Health would have to be shelved if the court had not acted and granted a stay.
The field of embryonic stem-cell research has been highly controversial, because in most cases the research process involves destroying the embryo, typically four or five days old, after removing stem cells. These cells are then blank and can become any cell in the body.
Embryonic stem-cell research differs from other kinds of stem-cell research, which don't require embryos.
Some scientists believe embryonic stem cells could help treat many diseases and disabilities because of their potential to develop into many different cell types in the body.A wheelchair-bound passenger who was debarked from a charter cruise in February on Celebrity Century after declining to hire a nurse has responded to a number of claims levied by the cruise line and charter company.
James Keskeny, 66, of Pinckney, Mich., has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair. On Feb. 18, he was ordered off a Bare Necessities Tour & Travel nude charter cruise in Guadeloupe, where he had to pay $1,500 for travel arrangements home. Keskeny said he paid in excess of $4,000 for the cruise. The story was first reported by the Oakland Press, a Detroit area news outlet.
On Monday, Celebrity Cruises confirmed the details to Cruise Critic, saying in a statement that the debarkation was necessary because Keskeny needed help getting into and out of bed and using the bathroom (where he suffered a fall) — "special assistance above and beyond what is provided to our disabled or wheelchair-bound guests." Bare Necessities founder Nancy Teimann agreed that Keskeny's needs were extensive: "He needed help every time he had to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, every time he needed to take a bath."
On the third day of the cruise, Celebrity officials told Keskeny he would have to hire a private-duty nurse at his own expense if he wished to remain on the 10-night Southern Caribbean cruise. He declined and was debarked the next day. The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal by Chipotle Mexican Grill on Monday and left intact a federal appeals court ruling in San Francisco that said a nearly 4-foot barrier in a waiting line denied wheelchair users the right to see the food they were ordering.
The barrier "subjects disabled customers to a disadvantage that non-disabled customers do not suffer," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July in a case from San Diego County. The ruling came on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to treat disabled patrons equally and remove unnecessary obstacles.
Maurizio Antoninetti said in his lawsuit in 2005 that a 45-inch barrier at Chipotle restaurants in San Diego and Encinitas blocked his view of the counter, where customers can inspect each dish, choose their order and watch it being prepared.
Chipotle said it met wheelchair users' needs by bringing them spoonfuls of their preferred dish for inspection before ordering. But the appeals court said that doesn't match "the customer's personal participation in the selection and preparation of the food."
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