Spinal Cord

Lansdowne junior football player Steve Sickle suffered a bruised and swollen spinal cord, a severely broken thumb and a concussion after fainting and falling face-first on the ground in Friday's loss to Hereford.Sickle, 15, said from his home last night that he was released from University Hospital after surgery to repair a broken thumb, and that he must return for a checkup Thursday to further examine his spinal cord injury.Doctors said Sickle, a champion weightlifter and also a baseball player, "is done for the football season," he said.

Of all the injuries Earl Moncrieff suffered in the terrible, head-on car collision, the trauma to his left hand was the worst. The throbbing, constant pain often crescendoed without warning, as if someone had suddenly banged his hand with a sledgehammer. Years after the crash, he would cry out and drop to his knees in the middle of the supermarket.But there was one problem that prevented doctors from treating him: Moncrieff no longer had a left hand.Along with much of his left arm, it had been all but severed in the accident.

Not often these days do you have the opportunity to meet a pioneer. Yesterday was such a day.Cody Unser, the 12-year-old daughter of Shelley Unser and CART driver Al Unser Jr., spun her wheelchair into the garden outside the Johns Hopkins Hospital Outpatient Center and was ready to begin interviews and medical tests."

Nothing could have warned Victor and Patsy Fleckenstein about the terrible coincidence that would befall their grown daughter and son -- paralyzed almost identically in automobile accidents 29 months apart.Yet the accidents have brought together under one roof the four adults, and four grandchildren, who see themselves as an average American family in their brick Dundalk row home, glittering these nights with hundreds of Christmas lights.But it is a remarkable family, whose struggle has inspired United Steelworkers of America members in four states to join in a $100,000 fund-raising effort to create a trust fund -- looking to the time when their colleague, Victor, 53, and his wife, Patsy, 51, can no longer tend to the needs of their children and grandchildren.

Life is still a party to Greg Montgomery. But the years have taught him to turn the volume down while living it to the fullest.Put him on a Harley motorcycle. Give him a pair of skis on a killer slope. Or a surfboard on a cool wave. Either way, Montgomery is a happy man. He is the first to admit he has lived a charmed existence.Take, for example, the way he turned the most crushing news of his youth into a career as one of the NFL's premier punters. Montgomery was a jock of all trades at Red Bank High School in Little Silver, N.J. Baseball, soccer, football, golf and, especially, ice hockey.

A magnetic resonance imaging exam has revealed that Ravens offensive lineman Herman Arvie suffered a small contusion on his spinal cord in the closing moments of Sunday's 21-14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.Ravens trainer Bill Tessendorf said Arvie will have another MRI on Friday, and added that he is not expected to play against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. Arvie could be out for the rest of the season."We're in a wait-and-see mode as far as the rest of the season for him, but everything is normal.

For most of us, it's a simple matter of making a fist.For Jeannette Semon, who slowly clenched and unclenched her fingers at the Baltimore veterans' hospital yesterday, it's the spoils of a hard-won victory -- fought with the help of advanced medical technology.The 31-year-old U.S. Department of Agriculture budget analyst is one of three people with spinal cord injuries who volunteered last year to let Baltimore physicians wire the muscles of one of their paralyzed hands to a surgically implanted electronic device.

At 14, Christine Williams became a paraplegic. Paralyzed from the chest down by a bullet in her spine, the East Baltimore girl struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide.Derrick Waters, 16, who used to play basketball and hang out with friends after school, sits at home in Woodlawn in a wheelchair. The lanky teen was shot in the head during an outing at a Northeast Baltimore shopping center.Five-year-old Jacquetta Dennis of Northwest Baltimore wears a helmet to protect her head. Doctors removed part of her skull pierced by a stray bullet in a shooting on her friend's doorstep.

Jermaine Jones' friends and teachers at Calvert High in Prince Frederick say that he is quite himself, full of laughter and fun.But the sophomore will miss this baseball season and likely all baseball seasons. He uses a wheelchair, and possibly will be in one for the rest of his life."It [adjusting to the wheelchair] is real tough, but it doesn't really bother me that much, and I won't let it," Jones said.Jones was paralyzed from the chest down after sliding home during a baseball tournament in North Carolina last summer.

The illness may strike any time, at any age for reasons that researchers cannot fathom. In a month, a week, sometimes as little as a day, it can paralyze a healthy person.In the next year, about 2,000 Americans will be hit with Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Some will have colds, sore throats or diarrhea before the onset of the disorder, some will not. Some will be completely paralyzed, others will suffer milder symptoms. Most will recover. About three in 100 patients will die."There are more questions than answers," says Dr. Joel Steinberg, a former Guillain-Barre patient and member of the board of directors of the Guillain-Barre Syndrome Foundation International, which today concludes its third annual symposium downtown Baltimore.

When Dawan Landry and Le'Ron McClain collided to open the Ravens' first full-team practice at training camp, defensive backs coach Mark Carrier didn't break a sweat or worry. Carrier had already gotten an answer about his strong safety's health months ago. In May, during the club's series of organized team activities, Landry, who is just 11 months removed from suffering a spinal cord concussion during a game against the Cleveland Browns, was sent on a safety blitz and eventually ran head-on into a blocker who deposited Landry onto his behind.

With summer in full swing and many families headed to the pool and beach, we're reminded that diving accidents are a common cause of spinal cord injuries. Males between the ages of 15 and 25 are the most common victims of diving injuries, 90 percent of which result in paralysis. Dr. Cristina Sadowsky of the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger Institute offers ways to prevent diving injuries with five things to keep in mind before you dive in and cool off this summer.

The Western Tech football coaches will host a bull roast Saturday night to raise money for the family of Chris Mason-Hale, the Wolverines player who suffered a paralyzing spinal cord injury in August. "We've been planning to do something for quite some time," said Wolverines defensive coordinator Matt Quayle. "I've been around football for a while and you just know this is one of the most severe injuries anyone can ever have. We just can't sit by. We want to do as much as possible for him."

Julia Cannen Hammond, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1970s shooting and later went on to became a teacher's aide, died of multiple organ failure March 14 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 56. Miss Hammond was born in Baltimore and raised on Keswick Road in Roland Park. She was a 1971 graduate of Western High School. On Dec. 31, 1975, Miss Hammond was visiting Joseph Lee, part owner of the Short Stop, a grocery-wine-beer carryout in Aberdeen. She had come to keep Mr. Lee, her boyfriend, company because he had to work New Year's Eve when an assailant came into the store, shooting Mr. Lee. After picking up Mr. Lee's .357-caliber Magnum revolver, which he kept in the shop, the robber forced the couple to lie on the floor.

Chris Mason-Hale vividly remembers the football play that changed his life. The scene rolls through his mind with the same detail as the action movies he watches on his portable DVD player at Kernan Hospital. A senior linebacker for Western Tech in Catonsville, Mason-Hale went for a routine tackle in the final scrimmage of the preseason, Aug. 29 at Northeast. "It was a dive," Mason-Hale said of the common short-yardage play. "They gave the running back the ball, and he came through the one hole.

Strong safety Dawan Landry was released from Maryland Shock Trauma Center and is expected to return to the field this season after suffering a spinal cord concussion in the second quarter of Sunday's 28-10 win against the Cleveland Browns. "His stability tests are all normal," coach John Harbaugh said. "He will be in a cervical collar for at least a week, and then they'll evaluate him further and then we'll just take it from there. He'll be playing in some number of weeks, and it won't be too many weeks."

A national drag-racing league announced yesterday that it has donated $60,000 worth of tickets to the Kennedy Krieger Institute's spinal cord injury center to help the Baltimore facility raise money. The American Drag Racing League gave 2,000 tickets to the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury for the league's July 25-26 event at Maryland International Raceway in Mechanicsville. The tickets typically sell for $30, but the spinal cord center is selling them for $10. Dr. John W. McDonald, director of the center, said in a statement that such private donations are "critically important" to help the center develop therapies to help people recover from paralysis.

Mike Smith, 64 Lead singer of The Dave Clark Five Mike Smith, the lead singer of the Dave Clark Five, died last week outside London, less than two weeks before the band is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The cause was pneumonia, a complication of a spinal cord injury he suffered in 2003 that had left him paralyzed below the ribs, according to Margo Lewis, his agent in New York. The Dave Clark Five, part of the so-called British Invasion of the early 1960s, recorded a string of hits including "Glad All Over," "Catch Us If You Can" and "Over and Over."

The crash that grounded Linda Berl had nothing to do with the Piper Cherokee that she flew to shuttle needy Eastern Shore patients to local hospitals. What got her was a low-altitude tumble from the front porch of her Delaware home in 2001 that left her with a broken leg and persistent, debilitating pain. "Sometimes I'll feel like my foot is on fire," she said. "It feels very deep, like it's in my bones." The pain dominated Berl's life for years, but now the 47-year-old Smyrna resident hopes to return to flying with the help of a spinal cord stimulator -- a device that Johns Hopkins doctors implanted under the skin of her back to override pain signals traveling from her body to her brain.

When Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett damaged his spinal cord during a football game Sunday afternoon, his only hope was the state-of-the-art medical treatment he received within a remarkably short time. Despite grim initial assessments of his chances for recovery, there were signs yesterday that aggressive treatment might have worked. The surgeon who operated on Everett said that his patient had voluntarily moved his arms and legs and that he was optimistic that Everett will walk again.