Word: cords
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When the spinal cord suffers a blow, vertebrae are compressed, and if the force is great enough, fractured. The sheer force of the blow kills some nerves instantly. Then the compression causes electrical impulses traveling through nerve cells in the area to go haywire, and the overload causes many neurons to kill themselves. The dying nerve cells leak calcium, which attracts enzymes to the area that chew on the tissues. The by-products are free radicals, unstable compounds that scavenge oxygen from healthy cells, often destroying them. As these cells die, they trigger a secondary wave of destruction that sweeps...
...result is gaping holes in the spinal cord. Long nerve fibers, or axons, that originate in the brain and weave down the spinal cord, eventually connecting with other nerves that branch to muscles as distant as the toes, are torn and stripped of their protective fatty coat of myelin. The myelin sheath is like the rubber coating on electrical wire. Without it, the nerves cannot function...
Like so many spinal-cord injuries, Reeve's resulted from a fluke accident. Originally, he was not even headed for the riding event in Culpeper; he had signed up to enter an event in Vermont when friends persuaded him to change his plans. After Vermont, he had intended to go to Ireland to make the TV mini-series Kidnapped, produced by Francis Ford Coppola. He just thought he would do one more event on his new horse, Eastern Express, called Buck, a 12-year-old American Thoroughbred gelding...
Methylprednisolone is a major advance in the spinal-cord research for which Reeve is now seeking support. An NIH-supported study showed that if MP was given within eight hours of a spinal-cord injury, a patient could save about 20% more neurons than if the drug was not used. For some, this 20% could mean the difference between breathing on their own and having to use a ventilator. Doctors speculate that at high doses, MP no longer acts as a steroid but instead inhibits the breakdown of fats into the dangerous free radicals that are like acid to cell...
...operations are as perilous as dealing with a C1-C2 injury. Sprouting from the spinal cord are 31 pairs of nerves. Closest to the brain are the eight cervical nerves, which process information received from the neck, shoulders, arms and hands. When Reeve was thrown from his horse, he could move only his head. (Most head-turning muscles are controlled by nerves emerging from the brain, not the spinal cord.) Now, a year later, he is able to shrug his shoulders and breathe on his own for lengthening periods of time, which means that his first, second, third and fourth...