Jon Rydberg and Dan James will be representing their hometown of Oakdale and their country by heading to Beijing this September to compete in the U.S. Paralympics. This is Rydberg's second Paralympics and he will be competing in singles and doubles wheelchair tennis. "It's one of the coolest things you can do," Rydberg said. "Representing your country, your state, everything like that. It's a whole package deal."

It happened in an instant. Dave Hartung was driving home from work the day after Christmas when a car darted from the shoulder of Interstate 97 and across two lanes to reach a ramp to U.S. 50. The vehicle smashed his car. While describing the crash to state troopers, Hartung now realizes, he was in shock. He went home to Severn and only in a few hours did he realize he was in pain, he said. At the hospital, doctors found that the accident had crushed four vertebrae in Hartung's spine and partially severed his spinal cord.

The Salk Institute's Samuel L. Pfaff, Ph.D. - to its International Research ConsortThe Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation today announced it has expanded the work of its International Consortium on Spinal Cord Injury to include a focus on the study of stem cells in injury and repair. Samuel L. Pfaff, Ph.D., of The Salk Institute, who has demonstrated expertise in stem cell biology and spinal cord expertise, has joined the Consortium as a Principal Investigator.

In a stop on a nationwide tour, he encourages others with disabilities. Wiggling a single toe was the impossible goal Aaron Baker dreamed about achieving in 1999. Nine years later and more than 1,500 miles into his trek, Baker is pedaling a specially made, three-wheel bicycle across the country to show others what it means to beat the impossible. "I'm crazy enough to ride a bicycle all the way here from San Francisco," Baker said.

The sun was shining, the balls were flying and the chairs were rolling yesterday at the Fanshawe Golf Course Parkside Nine. It was the eighth annual Madame Lise Thibault Golf Tournament, a three-person-per-team golf scramble for people with disabilities. The city donates the course -- the first in North America for people with disabilities -- for the day, Olizarevitch said. The course is flat and the greens are built on firm soil to allow a wheelchair to drive over them, he said. "There's no sand traps, no water, all on a 10-acre parcel of land."

The proteoglycan chondroitin sulfate (CSPG) plays an important role not just in the formation of the glial scar but also in the repair of spinal cord injury, according to an article released on August 18, 2008 in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine. In injuries to the central nervous system such as spinal cord injury, the glial scar is formed in a similar manner to scars in other parts of the body. However, while protecting the damaged area in many ways, it simultaneously releases chemicals that inhibit further regeneration.

Both quadri- and tetra- mean four. Naturally, most people would think that a quadriplegic and tetraplegic can't move any of their four limbs. But there's more to it than that.The National Spinal Cord Injury Association, among others, group tetraplegia and quadriplegia together. That disturbs me because my doctors always said that tetraplegia is a more severe spinal cord injury than quadriplegia. On Jan. 12, 1993, my brain stem was contused and spinal cord severed. My injury doesn't even involve any vertebrae.Quadriplegics that I've heard about only have their spinal cords damaged.

Coloplast supports critical change in catheter guidelines giving consumers choices, cutting healthcare costs and reducing exposure to bacteria People using intermittent catheters no longer need to re-use their catheters due to a new Medicare policy effective April 1, 2008. The change affects nearly 1 million individuals living with spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and spina bifida, as well as those who have other permanent conditions requiring bladder management or experience urinary incontinence or retention. Catheter re-use may be a key contributor to urinary tract infections. With approximately 10 million urinary tract infection-related doctor visits each year, the Medicare change is an important step in reducing healthcare costs through preventive care and lowering patient risks related to urinary catheterization.

Few therapies have consistently demonstrated effectiveness in preserving oxygen delivery after spinal cord injury (SCI). The researchers measured oxygen levels in rats in two studies to establish a dose response curve. The pressure of oxygen levels dissolved in the blood in spinal cord injury showed a profound drop from 21.4 to 10.4 mm Hg almost immediately post injury. In the relevant experiment, all animals that received Oxycyte combined with 100% oxygen showed significant improvement, with a mean increase in oxygen levels of 23.3 mm Hg. Only one saline-treated animal in the control group showed any benefit. Oxygen values in the group treated with Oxycyte reached up to six times the normal level.

Basically, antibiotic development became the cornerstone in the establishment of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA).  Like the hero in the Oscar-nominated movie Atonement, my great-uncle died due to infection from a wound he sustained charging a German machine-gun nest in World War I. If antibiotics had been available, he would have survived, and perhaps I would have met him.A decade later, future Nobel Laureate Alexander Fleming observed that bacterial growth was inhibited by a penicillin-generating mold. As a result of his discovery and the ensuing large-scale production of penicillin catalyzed by World War II's bloodshed, many soldiers wounded later in this war were able to live, including PVA founders.  Since then, scientists have developed numerous antibiotics, which have greatly increased life expectancy after SCI.

This may seem to be silly question but, until people get spinal cord injury or know somebody who is, most pay little attention to their spinal cords. Most people don’t know the different parts of the spinal cord, what each part does, and how the spinal cord transmits sensory and motor information. Many think that the spinal cord conducts information like a telephone wire and the spinal cord can be fixed by reconnecting it. Some people mistakenly believe that the spinal cord is the vertebral column. While almost everybody knows that spinal cord injury causes paralysis, many are not aware that the spinal cord also controls the bladder and bowel, sexual function, blood pressure, skin blood flow, sweating, and temperature regulation.

The effects of SCI depend on the type of  injury and the level of the injury. SCI can be divided into two types of injury - complete and incomplete. A complete injury means that there is no function below the level of the injury; no sensation and no voluntary movement. Both sides of the body are equally affected. An incomplete injury means that there is some functioning below the primary level of the injury. A person with an incomplete injury may be able to move one limb more than another, may be able to feel parts of the body that cannot be moved, or may have more functioning on one side of the body than the other. With the advances in acute treatment of SCI, incomplete injuries are becoming more common.

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is damage to the spinal cord that results in a loss of function such as mobility or feeling. Frequent causes of damage are trauma (car accident, gunshot,  falls, etc.) or disease (polio, spina bifida, Friedreich's Ataxia, etc.). The spinal cord does not have to be severed in order for a loss of functioning to occur. In fact, in most people with SCI, the spinal cord is intact, but the damage to it results in loss of functioning. SCI is very different from back injuries such as ruptured disks, spinal stenosis or pinched nerves.

The spinal cord is about 18 inches long and extends from the base of the brain, down the middle of the back, to about the waist. The nerves that lie within the spinal cord are upper motor neurons (UMNs) and their function is to carry the messages back and forth from the brain to the spinal nerves along the spinal tract. The spinal nerves that branch out from the spinal cord to the other parts of the body are called lower motor neurons (LMNs). These spinal nerves exit and enter at each vertebral level and communicate with specific areas of the body. The sensory portions of the LMN carry messages about sensation from the skin and other body parts and organs to the brain. The motor portions of the LMN send messages from the brain to the various body parts to initiate actions such as muscle movement.

Your Spinal Cord is important because without a spinal cord your brain and your body couldn't communicate with each other. The spinal cord is the pathway for impulses from the body to the brain, and from the brain to the body. These impulses are different signals our brain sends and receives from our bodies.