LASCI Hosts Motivational Program for MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute’s SCI Peer Group

In addition to paralysis and loss of sensation below the level of injury, spinal cord injury affects several body systems. The physical and emotional impact is devastating, and the resulting complications demand the intervention of a specialized rehabilitation team.

That’s why the MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio’s CARF Accredited Spinal Cord Injury Program offers patients individualized treatment by a team of clinicians specializing in spinal cord injury. After a comprehensive evaluation, the treatment team, patient, and family collaborate to set a realistic treatment plan and goals to return patients to their maximum level of independent functioning.

LASCI founder Bert Burns, a C-6 quadriplegic, visited with the MetroHealth Rehab SCI Peer Support Group on Monday 21, 2012 as part of a free motivational program that we offer to assist people with independence and goal setting after SCI.  UroMed representative Vicki Sizer also attended the event with Bert to help answer questions that participants may have had following the program.

Bert answers questions during the MetroHealth SCI Peer Support Group meeting.

During his presentation, Bert covered many of the topics that he is frequently asked questions on, including:

• Work/School
• Dating
• Sexuality
• Marriage
• Children
• Sports
• Bladder/Bowel Management

If you’d like to attend one of Bert’s upcoming engagements, please visit our website at www.uromed.com.  And feel free to contact us to invite Bert to participate in your program.

We’re pretty sure Pepsi, the service dog, was more interested in the snack bar than he was in Bert!

About MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute
The MetroHealth Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio has a number of programs, support services, and clinics to help patients with spinal cord injuries improve their functional abilities and adjust to a change in lifestyle. They serve patients with all levels and severity of spinal cord injury. Their designated 29-bed SCI/Multiple Trauma Unit is home to a program that treats more than 200 SCI patients annually. To provide continuity of care, patients with spinal cord injury are followed through outpatient services and programs.  Learn more at: http://www.metrohealth.org.

The MetroHealth SCI program offers the following specialized services:

• Easy Street environment
• ADL apartment
• Community re-entry
• Driver rehabilitation
• Adaptive equipment/assistive technology training
• ERGYS – electrical stimulation bicycle ergometer
• Body-weight support system
• Computer lab
• Academic and vocational re-entry
• Home evaluation
• Northeast Ohio Regional Spinal Cord Injury System
• Spasticity management
• Wheelchair mobility, seating, and positioning
• Bowel/bladder management – mrodynamics
• Sexual dysfunction counseling
• Functional electrical stimulation
• Tendon transfer

Skin care – wound management

 

UroMed offers free LASCI motivational events like this one at MetroHealth Rehab as a means of giving back to the community that we serve.

The MetroHealth Spinal Cord Injury program interdisciplinary team may consist of all or some of the following:

• Physiatrists
• Rehabilitation nurses
• Speech-language pathologists
• Physical therapists
• Occupational therapists
• Case managers
• Therapeutic recreation specialists
• Dieticians
• Rehabilitation psychologists
• Social workers
• Vocational rehabilitation specialists
• Art therapists
• Music therapists

Other professionals who may be involved in the program include:

• Consulting physicians/specialties (i.e. neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, pulmonary medicine, infectious disease, urologists, pharmacists)
• Spiritual/pastoral care providers
• Respiratory therapists

Gabriela McCall Delgado Creates An Organization To Connect People With Disabilities

Editor’s Note: Gabriela might have had a learning disability and ADD, but she was very intelligent, extremely interested in science and research and knew she could excel academically even though she had some challenges to overcome. Today the website she created and developed, We Connect Now, reaches high school and college students all across the United States and has been visited by people from more than 80 countries around the world. Part 2 of a 5 part series.

Gabriela knew there was a better way for people with disabilities to find success in college and beyond.

Whether you have a disability or not, we all like to be around people who understand us. Realizing that she had some special needs, Gabriela began to search the internet to try and find colleges and universities that had  services and programs for people with disabilities. She discovered there was no central place that people like her could go for information on higher education and employment issues. She also begin to look for colleges and universities that offered scholarships, jobs or internships. She realized that if she was having problems discovering this sort of information that other high school students and college students were having just as difficult a time.

As Gabriela reports, “In high school, I began to formulate the idea of We Connect Now, a website I created to provide information to young people like me all over the world about higher education college programs, employment, events, news, stories, blogs, laws, and pending legislation that affects those with disabilities. This way college students who have or have had physical, mental and/or emotional challenges, can talk to each other and share problems and solutions they’ve discovered to those problems.” Since Gabriela was bilingual, she wanted the webpage to serve Spanish and English speaking countries. Gabriela began to dream and brainstorm ideas about this website that would reach out to so many people.

Gabriela was awarded a scholarship to Juniata College of Environmental Science in 2008, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania because of her thorough environmental work. That same year she created the We Connect Now website (www.weconnectnow.wordpress.com). She also received seed money in the form of a grant from YP4 (Young People For), a long term leadership development initiative that identifies, engages, and empowers the newest generation of progressive leaders. It focuses on identifying young people who are campus and community leaders today, engages them in the broader progressive movement and empowers them with the knowledge, strategies and skills they can put to work to promote positive, sustainable change in their communities. YP4 was started by People for the American Way and for over 30 years, this organization has invested in young people through campus activities, leadership training and career development.

The We Connect Now logo stands for uniting people interested in rights and issues affecting people with disabilities, with particular emphasis on college students and access to higher education and employment issues. Photo source.

Please visit the We Connect Now national Facebook page for more information and updates. You can also follow We Connect Now on Twitter and watch our We Connect video on YouTube.

Next: Gabriela McCall Delgado’s We Connect Now Website Goes International

About the Author: For the last 12 years, John E. Phillips of Vestavia, Alabama, has been a professional blogger for major companies, corporations and tourism associations throughout the nation. During his 24 years as Outdoor Editor for “The Birmingham Post-Herald” newspaper, he published more than 7,000 newspaper columns and sold more than 100,000 of his photos to newspapers, magazines and internet sites. He also hosted a radio show that was syndicated at 27 radio stations; created, wrote and sold a syndicated newspaper column that ran in 38 newspapers for more than a decade; and wrote and sold more than 30 books. Learn more at http://www.nighthawkpublications.com