Word: quadriplegia
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Medical records never convey these sentiments. After the war, my father brought my mother and brother to the United States where doctors scrutinized John’s condition. “Mr. John Adams is an Asian male who has been a quadriplegic since 1976. The quadriplegia developed after encephalitis. The patient was worked up by infectious disease doctors who could not determine a cause for the encephalopathy. The encephalopathy resulted in the quadriplegia and mental retardation. The patient will never progress further than six years of age and will need full-time care for the rest of his life...
Reeve is a valiant person and a magnificent spokesman for spinal-cord-injury regeneration research. His accomplishments should certainly be applauded. But his bravery is far outshone by those thousands of "average" men and women with quadriplegia who, despite less-than-optimal health care, little or no family support and few opportunities for independence through employment or education and training, go on day after day, always trying their very best to live their life in a positive, loving and productive way. They are the real heroes. CATHERINE W. BRITELL, M.D. Mercer Island, Washington Via E-mail...
...into euthanasia. Strangers can never decide whose life is worth living, because strangers by definition don't know enough; but neither do friends, because the outside of an illness is so different from the inside. To the eye of Health, any number of conditions may seem quite hopeless: quadriplegia, blindness--how can anyone live with these? Yet on the inside the patient may be bubbling over with ecstasy or rage or despair over something quite unrelated. Happiness seems to proceed on a quite separate track from health, and anyone who's had a major disease has likely had a sense...
Although clearly loved by his family, he has finally had enough of such a narrowed life, saying he and those who care for him have become physical and psychological slaves to his quadriplegia. He has used his mechanic's skills to devise a mouth-operated phone dialer and a table on which he can mouth- write letters, but the smallest of pleasures beyond those require outside help. For the occasional cigarette he enjoys, lighting, ash flicking and stubbing out must be done by someone else...
...decade has passed since spinal cancer seemed sure to foreclose one of the most esteemed careers in contemporary American writing. At that time a physician cousin told the family that Price's prospects were "six months to paraplegia, six months to quadriplegia, six months to death." He endured multiple surgeries, steroids that distorted his mind and body, torturous physical therapy that proved unavailing, massive leaks of spinal fluid and altogether understandable despair. When the battle was over, when the addictive pain-killers and useless back braces and countless other palliatives were tossed aside, he was paralyzed and in perpetual pain...