skin with the point of a safety pin to understand where numbness ended and sensation began, methodically testing the structures of the brain, spinal cord, nerves, muscles, each linked to the next by an ephemeral connection with innumerable ways that each might fail.A young woman arrives at the hospital, unable to close one of her eyes or drink from a straw, and I learn that she has a facial palsy and inflammation
One example of an antisense oligonucleotide that's transforming lives is a medicine called Spinraza, generically nusinersen, which is being used to treat a devastating disease called spinal muscular atrophy, which is a rare, hereditary genetic condition in which the connections between nerves from the spinal cordand the brainstem and the body's muscles just don't work properly.
And then, that's like something that they ran on the cover-- could've been that one or something similar. Spinal Tap-- I got to see Spinal Tap.This is a "BAM" magazine cover.
Todd: That was cool >> Tony: That was a measure of our desperation. Spinal injury, it's always entertaining.That will get us five minutes.
I see the hours she spent in labor to deliver the infant strapped across her chest, her legs lifted and bent as she bore down, the nerves connecting her spinal cord to her foot stretching and compressing until finally, they fatigued and failed. When I began medical training, I worried that I paid too much attention to the details of these stories and not enough to the technical details of cell biology
So that-- Congratulations. Thank you. My spinal cord inflammation, I've been able to recover quite well from. But my optic nerve inflammations or my optic neuritis-- that was much harder.
They spent six hours operating on me. For spinal surgery like this, they cut around my entire body. I have a scar that wraps around my body.
And as the child that this family knew slipped away, the doctors finally realized that she had a rare form of spinal meningitis. Her brain was deeply affected by the disease. It was a tragic situation.
Breathe in and draw up the earth energy from your feet to your legs and hips. The spinal discs are stacking one by one on top of each other, with space and fluids for ease of movement.
In other words, unless you're providing value to the people you serve-- Medtronic at providing genuine value from its products, its defibrillators, its spinal products, its diabetes products-- unless it's better than any of the competitors, Medtronics is going to go out of business. That's what happened to General Motors.
he hasn't finished it up because of COVID, actually. And we also did spinal taps.
And over time, it became clear that I was. And I discovered that spinal cord injury strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human, and it turned me from my upright running, jumping form into a seated version of myself.
And if we do, there's just a small chance that she might walk again. But it's delicate spinal surgery. They spent six hours operating on me.
So now all these inflammatory markers and whatever you ate that day or drank that night that you maybe shouldn't have eaten or drank, now has the ability to get up into the spinal fluid. And then you have the weight gain, the insulin resistance, the type 2 diabetes.
If I just try and tell a room of people to remember the word for to fit in Spanish, very difficult to remember caber tomorrow. He suffered a spinal cord injury, he was paralyzed, and went blind.
It can unleash the best in human nature, selfless sacrifice for others. Your brain and spinal cord are comprised of 100 billion neurons, all have to be connected, correct?
My mother recently died of a stroke. And Steve has spinal muscular atrophy. These are all disabilities just within my life.
those with stroke and spinal cord injury.
It may be the spinal tap version that goes to 11, but I don't think so.
Nigel from Spinal Tap?
They were giving away promo material. It's like a Spinal Tap joke. They said, you know, to the record company, "We want to do limited edition calendars, calendars" right?
connects with the spinal cord, was of a size that suggested that it had a much smaller brain than a hominid of that
So they did several spinal taps on me, but it's still wasn't alleviating the pressure.
It's a spinal reflex. You can tell her that.
The wrist represents the spinal cord.
Unlike a Spinaltap t-shirt, it doesn't say "cancelled" against half of them.
Stephen Strittmatter from Yale and his colleagues learned that certain cells in the spinal cord secrete substances that actively inhibit regrowth of severed nerve fibers after a spinal cord injury. These molecules block axons from growing new branches and prevent nerve cells from establishing new connections.
Just hard work and it'll all be OK. But when your lying paralyzed in a spinal ward, it's pretty obvious that that's not the case. And I realized that sometimes you can't change the circumstances of your life.
And I go, yeah. year after I'd left the spinal ward.
And the diagnosis was for spinal muscular atrophy, which essentially means that the message between her brain and her spinal cord gets kind of jumbled up.
I was born with a disease called spinal muscular atrophy.
And I didn't come across any of this voluntarily. A friend of mine tragically had a spinal cord injury, fell from a third story balcony, and doctors told him he'd never walk again. And he didn't want to accept that.
It also gets information from the spinal cord as well.
And the brain is flooded with cerebral spinal fluid, that just cleans it.
So the next step is a spinal tap, which I hope none of you ever have to do, because the headache the next day
It's not Nigel from Spinal Tap, but that's a great guess.
that's fine it's the spinal tap version over there you guys are you circling numbers what numbers anyone raise your hand if you're
So now we can see these are the neurons in my spinal cord that-- they're synapsing on those muscle fibers.
So those cells cross over down to your spinal cord and go to the other side.
I'd been hit by a speeding truck with only 10 minutes to go on the bike ride. I was airlifted by the Westpac rescue helicopter to a large spinal unit in Sydney. I had extensive and life threatening injuries.
They did some tests. They discovered that there was a blockage in my spinal cord. They said we're going to have to operate.
It's very much Irish style on that. I was fundraising for these events for people with spinal cord injuries, and I was sending out emails. And office e-mails, of course, you normally end them the same way-- kind regards, very formal.
It can unleash the best in human nature, selfless sacrifice for others. The tissue is kept alive in artificial cerebral spinal fluid, warmed, oxygenated.
We're going to clean out all the stenoses in your spinal canal and in your nerve root canals, and on, and on, and on.
And Jake's storyline is about him getting spinal fusion surgery, which you actually did.
And then from about this area to the top of the spinal cord.
This guy up here has a very severe spinal cord injury.
So he has a complete transection of his spinal cord, very high.
She was the director of occupational therapy at the Lucerne Spinal Injury Center.
It's grown out of the confines and context of just spinal work, but we're well beyond that.