SANFORD--The work at Step It Up Recovery Center, Inc., a nonprofit organization in Sanford that officially opened in July, begins for the spinal cord injury (SCI) patient when he leaves the hospital, provided he can breathe on his own, does not have severe osteoporosis and has been cleared by a physician to begin an intensive exercise program.

 

By the end of the first phases of recovery—reactivation (Phase I) and development and stabilization (Phase II)—trainers Malerie Murphy and Ronnie Pryor have helped the SCI person achieve the goal of manipulating the affected areas of the body, thereby stimulating sensory input and exciting a motor response stimulating the nervous system with load bearing and active recruitment to develop joint stabilization. 

 

"Reactivation or reorganization of the nervous system is what seems to cause the most controversy regarding The Dardzinski Method," said Liza Perla-Riedel, founder and president of Step It Up, one of only eight Project Walk®-certified centers in the world that use The Dardzinski Method. "We started this program with the belief that a nervous system traumatized by a spinal cord injury could reorganize itself when introduced to proper external stimulation. Recent research has confirmed that. However, without proper external stimulation, the human nervous system will deteriorate after injury."

 

Riedel explained that improvement cannot be made when the nervous system is medicated with drugs that interfere with the correct sensation and prevents errant muscle contractions, and when it is exposed to treatment that refuses to stimulate the paralyzed body parts.

 

"NASA and the Russian space programs have both spent millions of dollars researching how the body deteriorates when exposed to reduced gravity, including loss of bone density and muscle mass," she said. "Place a person with a spinal cord injury in a (reduced gravity) chair, pump them full of drugs, and leave them alone. What will happen? Nothing. At Step It Up, we're attempting to reactivate the nervous system with a goal of developing it into a more functional system. We'll never guarantee that a client will walk because the truth is, we don't know. What we do know is … we've developed a method that can aid the injured nervous system in regaining lost function."

 

Many Step It Up clients now control their muscles below the level of injury. "However, time and time again, we hear they're doing so because they're incomplete injuries," said Riedel. "This is untrue. Some started the program many years post injury when 'spontaneous' recovery should have plateaued. Others were diagnosed with complete injuries in the hospital, but have regained enough function to now be considered incomplete."

 

The remaining phases of recovery include strength and eccentric/concentric contractions (Phase III), function and coordination (Phase IV) and gait training (Phase V).

 

The program has worked well for Robert Mudge of Ormond, Fla., who was in an auto accident on Aug. 19, 2001, that left him a "C5 quadriplegic."

 

"My first taste of therapy included relearning to swallow food," he recalled. "Once I was cleared to leave the hospital, I began therapy in Atlanta at the Shepherd's Center."

 

Mudge was initially placed in a power chair because of weakness in his arms, particularly his left arm. He stayed in the power chair for five years. After four years of rehabbing at home, outpatient therapy in Daytona Beach, and many repeat visits to the Shepherd's Center, he began looking for a more aggressive and progressive program and stumbled across Project Walk. When he began the program in a California facility in mid-2006, Mudge was still in a power chair and had minimal control of his body.

 

"After returning home, I began building a modified gym with some equipment that I used at Project Walk and put into practice what I learned there during my visit," he said. "When I returned (to the California facility) in the summer of 2007, I was using a manual chair with power assist wheels. This was also the visit in which I took my first steps with the assistance of the specialists and a walker. Before my most recent visit, I had my baclofen pump removed."

 

Last summer, Mudge focused on exercises while standing and trying to turn off his spasms and have "nice controlled leg movement," he said.