Word: spinal
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...country. An Army service technician who entered the military a few years after high school, Winkler, 34, took a two-year hiatus in the late '90s, only to realize he belonged in the military. But in 2003, Winkler fell off an ammo truck in Tikrit, injuring his spinal cord...
...Then there were the MRIs of his lumbar spine: Here the docs-in-the-box might have been simply playing the odds. Patients who complain of leg pains often turn out to have what we call radiculopathy, which affects the spinal nerve roots. Sciatica is a well-known term for one type of this. Although caused by pressure on a nerve in the back, there might be very little or no back pain. Patients sometimes just cannot believe there is nothing wrong in their leg. Tim could have been vague about his story, or he might have been so wound...
...Over lunch in the VA hospital's spinal cord injury unit, the director explains that the toughest part to cast in Halloween was the teenage babysitter. You'd think there would be hordes of girls lining up to make the career transition from tween starlet to the role that brought Jamie Lee Curtis fame in the original. And indeed there were. "We kept getting sent these typical Hollywood hottie girls who grate on your nerves, with perfectly plucked eyebrows," says Zombie. Ultimately, he went with a normal-looking teenager named Scout Taylor-Compton, 18, who has solid indie creds, including...
...that he had regained some sensation and motion throughout his body, thanks to a regimen that included being suspended by harness over a treadmill while therapists moved his legs through a walking gait. The therapy, known as locomotor training, was said to take advantage of the fact that the spinal cord is hardwired with a sort of backup program for walking, one that can take over when signals from the brain quit...
...most of what a patient has left. It's less helpful when the spine is completely severed--by, say, a gunshot. This prevents the brain from getting any signals downstream. But most injuries are not so complete. As long as some links are present, so is potential. "The spinal-cord networks become optimized for the new situation," Harkema says, "and the brain changes as well." As that happens, entire lives--many that have just begun--change...