How Disability Advocate Wesley Hamilton Became Empowered by Adversity

Episode Transcript

Dr. Daniel Correa:
From the American Academy of Neurology, I'm Dr. Daniel Correa. This is the Brain & Life podcast.
Let's think back to your morning. When you woke up. Most people here listening probably got out of bed, stood up on their own two feet, started thinking about how they were going to get dressed. Now think of the challenges that many people in our community may encounter just with that, just transitioning from bed out into your space and room, maybe to a wheelchair, and then going through coordinating your arms and legs to get dressed. Many people live with neurologic impairments and mobility limitations that make that task a significant challenge. Our guest today, Wesley Hamilton, was featured in season four of Queer Eye, where his story about being injured from a gunshot wound to his spinal cord and his recovery was such a significant impact in his life and was featured again on their most recent season where he joins the Queer Eye team in helping another guest.
Wesley shares with us not only about his own spinal cord recovery, but how he worked on himself as a man and as a father. I really enjoyed this discussion and I hope you all do too. Make sure to listen through to the end where we continue the discussion with Dr. Barth Green, a neurosurgeon in Miami, and an advocate for spinal cord injury community members worldwide. Now stay tuned in the coming weeks for a discussion on brain health and how it's impacted by our sleep. We've touched a little bit on this, but we're going to go further into this discussion on brain health and sleep with Dr. Jennifer Milano.
Welcome back. So today on the Brain & Life podcast, our guest has turned a traumatic tragedy into truly a new perspective on life and how he defines and expresses himself. We'll hear from Wesley Hamilton himself about his injury and trauma, but most importantly, he has not shied away from the reality that it opened opportunities for self-improvement and development as a person and father to his daughter.
During his recovery, he trained as a dietician and in 2015 founded the nonprofit Disabled But Not Really to advocate and support others on their journey to a new stage of courage and confidence in their life with disability. Thank you so much, Wesley, for joining us.

Wesley Hamilton:
Thank you for having me, Daniel. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So I'd like to go back. You've talked about really your life has had different stages, and at age 22, I imagine your life and perspectives on things changed a lot when you became a father and then things flipped on their head again. For you at age 24. Introduce us to the Wesley and your life before your daughter at age 22, and then how things quickly changed in the following two years.

Wesley Hamilton:
I appreciate that question. And prior to the age 22, I was just a product of my environment. I'm an African-American male that grew up on the east side of Kansas City, and most people when they hear that reference might not understand what that means, but for me, just think of someone that has grown up in a place their whole life but never could see themselves outside of that area. My block radius was all I knew, so my mindset was very limited to what I could do, what I thought I could do, or even who I thought I could be. And because of that I just grew up very negative. I always had this resent for life due to the fact of not having the same opportunities as others. And because of that, I think I lived day by day just trying to survive.
I never had ambition to be more because I was still that product of my environment. Because I wasn't surrounded by leaders that actually rose above their circumstances, looked at their environment as just a place that they could learn, but they were willing to go and explore and grow. Instead, we were all just literally trying to learn from each other, which kept us like crabs in a bucket. I always wanted to do things that were outside of the box, outside of my community. I went to different schools. I was just a person that was literally trying to survive with the only opportunities that I could see.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So you had a very negative perspective on your possibilities and very little sense of future beyond the day-to-day as you mentioned. And then at age 22, you became a father. What changed for you about thinking about your life and time and that day-to-day lifestyle?

Wesley Hamilton:
When I think about it, I never thought I was going to make it past the age of 21. So having a little girl at 22 wasn't necessarily something I planned on, but it was probably the most profound thing that had happened to me in life because it was the ability to see my perspective on life shift because now I had a reason to live. My mindset was I want to guide my daughter into a different life than the one that I'm living currently. So everything for me changed being a father, and I think that was the moment that I started to believe that I could grow into something that I couldn't see.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So you're starting yourself on a path beyond what you ever even saw was the horizon, and she was such a positive change and focus in your perspective. Soon after things changed again for you.

Wesley Hamilton:
Same way I just put it, my daughter coming into my life allowed me to see a life that I really couldn't see, right? I started doing things that was more responsible as an adult and then leading up to close to around my daughter's second birthday, I was shot multiple times in my abdomen after a verbal altercation that left me paralyzed from the waist down the T11, T12 incomplete spinal cord injury. And that alone in itself changed my perspective on life. It changed even my perspective on parenting. January 14th, 2012 was the day my life changed forever.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
And so for our listeners, the more specifically just sort of describe that. So at the top of your low back, the bottom of the thoracic spine, you had an injury that almost completely injured your whole spinal cord. That's when you say a near complete, so not a complete cut of your spinal cord, but injured everything to the point where you lost a lot of the function and ability of both of your legs.

Wesley Hamilton:
I think the bullets did more damage to the nerves themselves than the actual spinal cord, which led to the disconnect in my mobility and... Absolutely.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
You went into the hospital for this gunshot trauma, not even sure about how healthy or if you would come out of it. And I imagine then you needed surgery and time in the ICU. Tell us a little bit more about those first few moments getting to the hospital and the initial sort of understanding of what was going on.

Wesley Hamilton:
Absolutely. I woke up, it's my birthday weekend. I'm ready to go out, I'm ready to enjoy myself, and I get in this altercation that leaves me lying on the ground, two holes in my chest, people running all around, and frankly, I thought I was going to die. Okay. I remember holding my best friend's hand because he was there at that moment and just looking at him and saying, "Man, I'm about to die." And ended up getting into the ambulance and being driven to a hospital and I just remember the doctor holding my hand and saying, "What's your name?" And me looking up and just saying, "Help me." And then pass out, wake up, and at this moment my eyes are open, but I can't speak. I have a tube going down my throat. All I can do is visualize my intermediate family, my mom, my brothers, my sister, my dad, and they're looking at me.
I'm in ICU at this moment and everyone's emotional. I don't know what's happened to me. I don't know anything more than I'm alive, right? Never in my life would I thought I was paralyzed. That just never clicked. So I kept having to be sedated because I was trying to pull this tube out. So wake up, go right back to sleep, wake up, go right back to sleep. It was a repetitive thing until I was able to get out of ICU.
And so when I finally got into the hospital room, this means you have a couple of therapists coming in, you have some doctors coming in, they're trying to see if you have any mobility. Of course they might already know what you're dealing with, but they're just trying to figure out if there's anything waking up in this matter of 48, 72 hours. I don't know what that looks like, but that's how I felt. What it did for me though was already let me know there was a problem before I was told there was a problem. So within this next two weeks, we went through the same process. By the end of that second week, I feel like that's when I was actually told really what happened, and it could have been sooner, but everything just seemed like it just took forever.
And that's when the doctor actually finally came to me told me, "Mr. Hamilton, you have a T11, T12 incomplete spinal cord injury due to your gunshot wounds and basically you just won't be able to walk again. If you're trying to get motor function, it probably ain't going to happen." Everything I heard was, "You're not going to walk again. This is over." My reaction to that, I was hurt. I was, "How am I supposed to live this life?" How am I supposed to live a life that one I hadn't been introduced to, not in a normal accepting way.
So for me, I was thinking, "I'm going to be in this wheelchair. One, how I'm going to be a father in a wheelchair. I just got custody of my daughter. She's only two." All these things. Am I going to be able to work? It was so many questions that were left unanswered. I think that was the process. It was, now I'm clueless. Now I have this ability to either accept or go into denial and I went more into denial because I just believed I was going to be that miracle.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
What do you think was able to sustain you and give you some outlook and as you say, life or hope?

Wesley Hamilton:
Most people are putting their fears on you. It doesn't matter that you're a medical professional. If you feel and hear something about a traumatic injury and you've already thought to yourself, you don't know what you would do if it happened to you, you're putting those thoughts and fears on someone else. I've never had anyone that gave me more than their sympathy, and because of that, it made me feel like I was less, it made me feel like there was not more. So now I'm looking like my life is about to be sorry because this happened.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
I mean, I think that's a profound perspective and wisdom that you offer not just to all the healthcare providers, but even to family, friends and community members that they focus on this idea that there is more to life than just what you lost.

Wesley Hamilton:
Absolutely. I don't feel like everyone gets that, and that's why just sharing from my perspective, because I definitely work with individuals. I know individuals. I know there's hospitals for spinal cord injuries now that can really give you and empower you, but none of these resources was shared with the young kid from the east side of Kansas City that was shot and paralyzed. And so for me, my journey following that was literally a self-determined journey that was willing to defeat all of the odds that were stacked up against me.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
And you felt like that sense and that just sort of gap in what you were offered, did that even start when you moved on to beginning your spinal cord rehab or was it a different environment once you were in that setting?

Wesley Hamilton:
When I started my spinal cord injury rehab, I would say rehab only lasted 30 days. And when you have something that changes the trajectory of your life and you have two months to be prepped for a new life like this, it's hard. I wasn't really accepting to my rehab. I didn't want to do anything. It took forever for me to be okay with cathetering.
It took forever for me to be okay with rotating my body or even doing pressure releases. Which if the listeners don't understand what that is, it's more if you have any mobility issues and you find yourself being in a seated position a lot, it's necessary for you to relieve pressure from your buttocks because it can cause sores and those sores can lead into something even more dangerous for you. And so for me, I didn't want to do none of it, but because I wasn't aware of my situation, but I was aware of the doctors coming in every day saying, can you feel this today? Every day I woke up, I thought I was going to feel something. And so with that, going through rehab was the hardest thing for me because I didn't care about what they were teaching me.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
It sounded like all along the way you were encountering just issues and gaps in the outlook and clarity about what you should be working on and what the challenges were going to be over time.

Wesley Hamilton:
After the first year of being paralyzed, I ended up getting diagnosed with a stage four pressure ulcer ulcer. I got out the hospital, I was working a full-time job prior to my injury, of course, trying to be a better father. So for me, I thought this was a place where now I have to go back to work. My job is helping with my insurance, all of this, but at some point I got to go back to work. After five months, I was already back to working full-time eight hours a day. My job wasn't aware of how to serve people with disability. So one, I go back into a space where everybody knew me before, so now I'm looked at different, the space isn't very accessible, so I'm dealing with that barrier. I'm dealing with the fact that everyone made me feel like I needed to get back to the normalcy of life instead of accepting this new life of mine the same way I needed to.
That led to me basically having that pressure ulcer. After the first year I got on bed rest. Again, I didn't care about it as much. The bed rest went from a few hours a day to about 21 hours a day. I literally could not get up because it was just that bad. I did all type of things When it came to trying to help this wound heal from wound vacs to trying to eat better, to drinking different Ensure and all these different protein shakes and all to say is that after year two, I'm still defeated, right? It got worse before it got better, and it was all these factors that made it where it became worse. I just never had time to accept, to heal, to actually be something more. Instead, I was kind of forced back into a life that wasn't accepting to me and I'm overweight, so if I haven't shared it with anyone, I was like 230 pounds probably when I first got injured.
So maybe my max got to 250, but I'm only five four. So it was definitely, I was very big and that caused other health issues. It was hard to lift myself up. I just hate looking in a mirror. One day I was getting out the hospital bed and getting back in my wheelchair and my daughter looked at me, this is probably like a year into bed rest, and my daughter looked at me and she was like, "Daddy, you getting in your Superman chair?" It goes back to what I said at the beginning about how no one gave me hope. My daughter had literally spoke life into me. That was the moment that I was so weak at that time. No one else gave me that strength. My doctors didn't. My therapists didn't. My family didn't. Everyone accepted how I felt. Everyone accepted where I was in life. But my daughter, no, she put a cape on me and that was when I took up a course at Johnson County Community College in Kansas City, and I took up a dietician course and I would go to campus for two hours a day.
I was still on ERs for 21 hours. The other hour that I had was my commute. The moment I opened up a book on nutrition, it changed my life. I never saw food in that way. Again I grew up in what they refer to as food deserts where fast food and corner stores are probably where you get most of your produce or anything, right? And that's what I knew. I just started to eat different. I started to just be guided through the things I was learning, and I would say within a year I had lost over 100 pounds. So I was going through all these practices of eating better, doing better. I couldn't do exercise because I was still on bed rest, but I could eat better, but I was still in denial. I had never lost weight. I had finally became Superman and my own sense, and now it was time to actually serve others through that. And I started Disabled But Not Really in a hospital bed. I was literally about to get out of the hospital in April and I started the nonprofit organization.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So what is DBNR or Disabled But Not Really doing in terms of working with individuals in somewhat of a similar situation or other disability situations as you?

Wesley Hamilton:
So Disabled But Not Really's mission is to instill a physical limitless mindset that breeds courage, confidence, and competence. We have a 12-week program called the Help Me Fit Challenge where we really dig into the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of the individuals that we serve. We work with those with physical disabilities as well as there are exceptions depending on your ability to do certain work, but we try to be very open-minded and open our doors to anyone that's just trying to take control of their life. So disabled not really is a way that we can create a space that not only one person that identifies with similar disabilities, but you can be in a space where there are people in different situations than you that you can find empowerment and motivation through to help you have the courage to see more in your life and the things that you do. So it's big on peer support and community as well as just individuals pushing past their mental limits.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
And the participants in the program on your website, they're listed as athletes, are those people who've completed the program.

Wesley Hamilton:
Once you sign up for our Help Me Fit Challenge, we do give you a title as an athlete, we want you to feel empowered. To me, an athlete is someone that is willing to have the courage and ability to push themselves and challenge themselves through some type of activities that become more, whether it's physical, mental, or emotional.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
To see that hurdle and not let it limit you.

Wesley Hamilton:
Exactly.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So Wesley, going back age 24 Wesley in the ICU, when all the challenges ahead of you were starting to come into focus, what would you offer and support?

Wesley Hamilton:
Hope. I just give them the ability to see themselves outside of the circumstances that they're living in. Finding the right representation for people to be able to see that their story resonates with someone else. For me, I think that those are the things that could have literally gave me so much power and maybe eliminated the levels of defeat that I faced.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
Wesley, you're our unique example of not being defined by your trauma, condition or disability, but rather having been transformed into a categorically, stronger person. And we thank you so much for sharing your story and everything you're trying to do. Also to share with others in this situation. Daniel,

Wesley Hamilton:
I really appreciate the platform. I really appreciate the ability to just allow me to share the story, especially from just the medical side too and just my insight on that because I do believe that we can all become better with understanding and knowledge. The beauty of all of this right now is that there are a lot of people that want to do good and do better, and this can guide you into that.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
I want to learn more about the conditions discussed in this episode and other factors that could impact your brain health? For the latest on causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and management of more than 250 of some of the most common and rare neurologic conditions, please visit brainandlife.org/disorders.
So Wesley Hamilton just shared with us his story about becoming a father and then within a year actually finding himself in a hospital bed recovering from a thoracic spinal cord injury from a gunshot. I'm now joined by a world renowned medical expert in spinal cord injuries. Dr. Barth Green is a spine surgeon, teacher, researcher, and has founded several nonprofit health initiatives. He works at University of Miami where he has led their neurosurgery department for over 22 years specializing in the surgical care of people with spinal cord injuries. Beyond the hospital walls Dr. Green in 1985 co-founded the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, an internationally acclaimed spinal cord injury and paralysis research center, and he also co-founded Shake a Leg Miami, an adaptive water sports center, combining education and recreation to serve thousands of children and adults with physical and developmental and economic challenges in their rehab pathways. You've been there for so many people through these moments after the trauma to help save and preserve their spinal cord function and that throughout their long path of recovery. Dr. Green, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Barth Green:
It's my pleasure to be here.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
Barth, I wanted to start off as doctors, we use many terms to describe types of spinal cord injury. Can you describe and explain these for our listeners?

Dr. Barth Green:
Well, basically we have a lot of classification nomenclature, but usually people come in either with function below their level of injury, which is an incomplete paralysis or without function below the level of injury. In a case for example, of a thoracic gunshot wound, usually from the chest down, there's no feeling or movement, and the patient has flacid meaning no tone in their muscles, no control of bowel, bladder. Cervical injuries, like a couple days ago we admitted and transferred a jockey who had a racing accident and he was quadriplegic and others are paraplegic or quadriplegic suffers a broken neck or a gunshot wound or another type of injury to their cervical spine. So below the level of the injury, they can't move or feel where a paraplegic is from the bottom of the neck, the chest down. And then we have a final category which are lumbar injuries, which are called cauda equina injuries. And that is when an individual is injured in the lumbar area and there's not a spinal cord, but nerve roots that are damaged, which present a whole new and different array of challenges.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
And when someone comes in with a complete spinal cord injury where they don't have function below the level of their injury, does that necessarily mean that they won't recover and recuperate some of that function?

Dr. Barth Green:
Well, traditionally, we always said a complete injury with no function has little or no chance of recovery. Statistically people quote 10%, but the truth is it's really related to the velocity of injury. So someone who is a gunshot wound that severs their spinal cord is less likely to recover function spontaneously. Someone who falls a short distance and has a spinal cord bruise rather than a severe shearing type injury like a gunshot wound is more likely to go from complete to incomplete. But still the chances are not predictable except for maybe 10%. If you're a race car driver and you're injured at 150 miles or 200 miles an hour in a crash or you have a very high velocity injury, your prognosis for recovery spontaneously is poor. But there's a lot of new opportunities through the research work that's being done at the Miami project and around the world that gives new opportunities to people whether they're complete or incomplete.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
Now, when some people come in with that level of injury, as you said, they are often flacid or where they almost can't move and there's really almost no tone or very loose tone in their muscles below that level of injury. But even if that doesn't improve, they're able later on to do things that they couldn't do in the hospital. Is that an adaptation process that they gain through the rehab then if they're not necessarily recovering more in those specific muscles?

Dr. Barth Green:
Actually what happens is there's a natural process if it's a cervical or thoracic cord injury, often they come in what's called spinal shock, which means that they're flacid as you described, with no voluntary movement, no feeling and no control of bowel or bladder. Sometimes, and most often, six to eight weeks later, they evolve out of spinal shock and they go from lower motor neuron, which means they're flacid to upper motor neuron, which means they have increased tone, which we term as spasticity. That same change occurs in the bladder and the bowel. So it becomes a challenge in management and a change of paradigm and the strategy for treating people and avoiding issues.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
You had brought up also that there's different ways that spinal cord can get injured. Car accidents like Gloria Estefan and Wesley's experienced with a gunshot or high velocity injuries like a jockey or a race car driver or a compression that develops slowly over time with arthritis. Can you help us understand some of these slower processes, how they are so different from the higher velocity injuries or a penetrating injury?

Dr. Barth Green:
Exactly as you described, there are certain neurological conditions like transverse myelitis and Guillain-BarrÃ© syndrome and others that are especially prevalent in today's day of immunology issues and challenges with viruses and with autoimmune diseases. And so we're seeing more and more patients who present with paralysis from other causes, including other neurological disorders like whether it's a LSS or other diseases. So there is a myriad of challenges and a myriad of opportunities for researchers to try and reestablish function. But there's no doubt that some people just from arthritis narrow their spinal column and they can have a minor fall or just bend over or sleep in the wrong position and become paralyzed. And others, it's a progressive degeneration of the spinal column that chokes off the spinal cord. The slower the onset and the less acute the injury, the more likely that there'll be recovery.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
There's always then also the challenge in understanding when someone needs surgery or what we often sometimes will describe as decompression, and sometimes some people after an acute injury or they may get it urgently within the first few hours or that first day in the hospital and other people, the doctors may suggest it within a few days or a week later, or maybe even leaving the hospital doing rehab and coming back and doing it as an outpatient. How is that decision process made?

Dr. Barth Green:
There's a lot of conflicting data, but most often the consensus in this country is the sooner you decompress and stabilize the spinal column, decompress the neurological tissue, spinal cord and nerves and stabilize the column, the better the outcome. And there is data to support that. But there's so many issues. People can come in with a collapsed lung, with a heart contusion, with a tear in their viscera, their abdomen, their organs. So there's a lot of confounding factors, but honestly, one of the most difficult is getting a patient to the right place at the right time.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
We were talking about the context of a chronic or slow occurring process in the acute situation or that urgent situation with trauma from a car accident. You may need that surgery right then or as soon as possible. So Barth, one of the other things that gets shown a little bit differently at times, whether it's TV or it's passed along from one person to another, is what is the right bystander or community first aid when someone has a really bad fall or when someone has an injury that may have affected their spinal cord, what should the people around them be doing?

Dr. Barth Green:
So I think it's very important that first responders immediately call 911 when they're at an accident scene or someone's down and then they make sure the patient's position so their airway is open and to see if you have to begin resuscitation. And again, being near resources, there's so many simple opportunities to save lives, but our society just isn't equipped with things like the Apple watches and things like defibrillators, and they should be part of our environment for safety. So the answer is we have a long way to go, but there is a great opportunity through the amazing research that's coming out of places like the Miami Project and other of our collaborators around the world. I mean, they're working to create hypothermia, for example, to cool the brain after head injury, to cool the spinal cord right at the scene of the accident, medications that can be applied. It's a simple process to apply this at the right time. So there's so many opportunities.
You can't begin to say, we've got more opportunities. We really do than challenges because the other side of the fence, we have an approach as the research going on. A lot of patients when they get to a big tertiary care center like ours, if they don't get there within 24 hours, are not able to participate in protocols, for example, with medications that have been shown in lower animals in some human trials to reverse paralysis or to limit the damage.
So timing is very important. We know the same thing occurs whether it's a cardiac arrest or with a stroke. Timing is essential. So people have to respond quickly, and if they don't have the knowledge, they need to make sure that people who are notified, who do have the knowledge. And then we have so many cases of physicians and nurses who have been injured in diving or whatever, and people run up and start to pick them up and they're smart enough to say, "Don't move me or move me carefully." Or the paramedics go to scoop them. They say, "No, no, get a device, stabilize my neck," this type of thing. And so this should be available to the public. So we have so many opportunities to help our first responders be better educated on spinal injury, brain injury, stroke, and the other neurological conditions. So there's again, a huge upside, and that's what makes me get up every morning with a smile is I know we can change the way it is.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
So it sounds like aside from always calling Emergency Medical Services 911, whether that's through an Apple Watch or a device like that, or even just the first person who responds, check if that person reacts and responds to you, then call for help, then make sure that they are in a position that they can breathe without an obstruction. Maybe that requires a little bit of movement, but beyond that, you don't want to do any other movement. And ideally, we all need more education, especially also first responders and more access to things that will help more carefully and appropriately stabilize someone's neck and spine. You mentioned research, and I want to continue in that direction. So you co-founded the Miami Project Cure Paralysis with NFL Hall of Famer linebacker Nick Buoniconti after his son, Mark sustained a spinal cord injury during a college football game. This project, along with other researchers around the world has been pushing forward our understanding and treatment options for spinal cord. What are you excited about now about treating both the acute injury and improving spinal cord injury recovery and rehab?

Dr. Barth Green:
Well, I think the most exciting opportunity lies in combining different parts of healthcare and medicine and science. For example, the Miami Project used to be all about the surgery and maybe lowering the body temperature, whether it was cardiac arrest or whether it was trauma, head injury, spinal injury. Now we realize the most important thing is to restore function to the nervous system, and that can happen a lot of different ways. And one of the greatest changes has been the marriage of bioengineering to neuroscience. And today we have a quadriplegic driving a race car in Pike's Peak using his brain, and this is without anything on his head. It's all implanted, and he can't move his arms very much at all. He can't move his hands, but when he thinks "accelerate" the race car goes forward. And how does this happen? It happens by putting together engineers, basic scientists and clinicians into a coalition to restore function.
That's the most important new concept. It's a combination of factors that is really exciting. I can tell you countless stories of individuals who spent 30 years not moving their hands, not being able to have a drink or drive their car, and now we just put some electrical stim. It's called neuromodulation, magnetic stimulation, which was first approved by the FDA for the mommy project like 30 years ago. But putting a cap on their skull, stimulating them, it finds new pathways, which they didn't use during development, but these electrical currents finds those pathways, and once the brain learns those pathways, it remembers them. So now we've got a very high profile member of one of the nonprofits who's able to lift a drink and drink his own soda without someone handing it and holding it over his mouth. We've got a senator, a senior senator from Brazilian government who's now able to drive her own wheelchair and to be more independent because she couldn't move her arms or legs for more than 25 years.
But this type of neuromodulation, she learned to use them, the pathways were there, and now she's changed her life functionally. So these are what really gives us tremendous enthusiasm to put more human and technical and financial resources to increase collaborations between organizations and universities and countries to make this happen because everybody benefits, it's a win-win win. So we're very excited. We have a major program called Kids Safe, Run Safe, Walk Safe, Cycle Safe, and it's all over the country now, but throughout the southeast, especially where we have these important programs that teach coaches what to do, teach people working at parks, what to do to prevent injuries, and then how to deal with them if they do occur. So there's just so much going on. It's a time of great excitement and great opportunity.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
One thing I think that often gets overlooked in these discussions about the amazing advances as you mentioned, is the best thing we can do is prevention of traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injuries, both with education and then understanding what to do in the urgent situation. I think there's always the challenge with implantable devices and this new technology that only certain people have access to it. You said even there's limitations and challenges and access to the specialty care for just the surgical services. Where do you think we are going in being able to get more people with spinal cord injury and other injuries that could benefit from neuromodulation access to these kind of therapies and care?

Dr. Barth Green:
Well, this will never be covered by insurance companies. It's very important that we create federal programs to support the opportunity for people with disabilities to optimize their quality of life, their functional status, their happiness, their longevity. And so it is going to take federal funding. Philanthropy is important, foundations, organizations, and we collaborate with dozens and dozens of state, local and federal and global foundations, but it's not enough. The cost, for example, on putting one patient's implants into the brain can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you can imagine if there's millions of people that have the potential to benefit, how are we going to pay for this? Well, one thing for sure, it cuts down medical costs, it cuts down complications, it cuts down hospitalizations. And by doing that, it has a tremendous positive impact in the healthcare system. But we have to educate our government that they should appropriate the proper funds.
And interestingly enough, a lot of those funds now are coming through the Department of Defense, but they also early on have appreciated the importance of taking care of their own. And so they've been not only providing good care through the Veterans Administration hospitals, they've also moved towards excellence in care in those facilities. But they've also supported research at non-military, non-government centers like the Miami Project to a great degree. So it's a very important change in our system, and there's no doubt that today after being in this field, I've really changed what I say and what I say with integrity and confidence, and I used to say, "I'm going to cure paralysis. We're going to care paralysis." But it was a wish, a hope spiritual thing. Today, it's a reality. I can see a newly paralyzed patient and sit by their bedside and speak to them and their family in a very honest, open way and say, "I believe you will regain function. I believe there will be cures for paralysis at different times, different ways, but I believe you won't be the way you are today."
The opportunity is real. It's not imaginary. It's not "I hope". It is reality. So that's a very important tool every day that keeps me smiling when I go to work, having the knowledge that there are hundreds of researchers in my hood at the Miami Project and thousands of researchers around the world that wake up every day thinking about restoring function, repairing the nervous system, and it's all connected, not just spinal injury, brain injury, peripheral nerve injury, but Alzheimer's, stroke, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis. There's nobody who's not affected by these neurological diseases and disorders, and there's nothing but opportunity to change the paradigm.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
Such wards, and I think important for all of us to remember there is a pathway to recovery and restoring function for many of these conditions, including spinal cord injury. You heard it from him, Dr. Barth Green. But for our listeners in our community, I also want to make sure that you heard that he said, we need your advocacy and support for more research funding and for access to care and some of these rehab and recovery devices that are going to be important for so many members in our community. Please look to support the American Academy of Neurology, the American Academy of Neurosurgeons, and other patient organizations that advocate for the community to have what needed and for the research to move forward. Dr. Barth Green, it's been an honor getting a chance to speak with you, hear about the pathway that you've taken to follow the leadership of these many individuals who are recovering and working towards a new world.

Dr. Barth Green:
It's been my pleasure. It's been my privilege and I ain't done yet.

Dr. Daniel Correa:
Thank you so much.
Thank you again for joining us today on the Brain and Life Podcast. Follow and subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss our weekly episodes. You can also sign up to receive the Brain and Life magazine for free at brainandlife.org and even get the Espanol version. For each episode, you can find out how to connect with our team and our guests along with great resources in our show notes. We love it when we hear your ideas or questions. You can send these in by email to blpodcast@brainandlife.org and leave us a message at 612-928-6206. You can also follow the Brain and Life Magazine and me on any of your preferred social media channels.
These episodes would not be possible without the Brain and Life podcast team, including Nicole Lussier, our Public Engagement Program Manager, Rachel Coleman, our Public Engagement Coordinator and Twin Cities Sound, our audio editing partner. I'm your host, Dr. Daniel Correa, connecting with you from New York City and online at neurodrcorrea. Most importantly, thanks to our community members that trust us with their health and everyone living with neurologic conditions. We hope together we can take steps to better brain health and each thrive with our own abilities every day. Before you start the next episode, we would appreciate it if you could give us five stars and leave a review. This helps others find the Brain & Life podcast. See you next week.

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