Medical question: rehab after a spinal cord injury

[RedImperator]

I'm in the process of writing a story in which a main character suffers a T9-T10 spinal cord injury. Are there any good resources available on the Interweb about the specifics of rehabilitation from such an injury? My Google-fu is weak and I've gotten nothing really useful so far. Her injury is a major plot point (obviously), and I really want to get the details right.

[Edi]

I don't know about anything on the internet, but I do know of one case where a spinal column injury that resulted in paralysis from the waist down was almost completely rehabilitated. It was in a documentary of some sort I saw years ago, but the case went roughly as follows:

The victim, a young man, in his late teens or early twenties, was incvolved in a car accident or something similar, and after he got out of hospital, the prognosis for any kind of recovery was considered to be very dismal. The doctors did say some very limited recovery could happen with the right kind of physical therapy. The guy's mother basically quit her job in order to be able to help her son full time. The therapy they used involved moving his legs and feet through the normal motions for walking. Normally this kind of therapy is limited by the availability of financial resources (since the therapists cost a shitload of money), but it can be done by anyone as long as they've been shown how to do it. So the woman and her son spent something like four to eight hours every day doing this, for months on end.

I don't remember how long they did it, but it was for a very long time, but he did recover. Not quite as good as before the accidentThe medical professionals who were asked about it theorized that the constant stimulus from the movement allowed his body to adapt so that there was some nerve regeneration (it happens under the right conditions, but very slowly) and also some reallocation of neural resources (intact pathways assuming the duties of damaged ones). Basically what allowed it to happen was the mother's dedication and mulish stubbornness so that her son got hundreds or thousands of times more physical therapy than he would have if they had had to rely on hired therapists provided by the health care provider.

I'm sorry I can't provide you with any details about who or where or how to get more information, since I don't remember almost any details. I do remember the starting condition, the end result and the educated opinion as to its cause simply because I had assumed paralysis was always permanent and because in that case the mother went to such extreme lengths for her son.

So, yes, if the condition isn't too severe, it can be done with enough perseverance and luck. Would make some damn good story material too.

I'd also guess that it's a safe assumption that the strength of a person's natural healing capacity is a factor. Some people simply heal better and faster than others. For example, minor cuts requiring a few stitches wouldn't leave almost any mark on me, but my girlfriend would get a rather ugly scar from a similar cut. My dad has recovered from an injury that would have required other people to have the injured bit, in this case a thumb, amputated, because he just heals so well. His doctor friend actually thought he might lose it since he hadn't gone to a hospital straight after the slip with the axe, but it healed good as new.

Hopefully this post was some help.

Edi