Robotics giving hope to paralyzed

Just a few months ago, not one news crew would have shown up to watch Justin Neff stand up and walk across a room.

That changed Oct. 29, 2014, when Neff was working on a roof. A board shifted as he swung his hammer, and he fell 10 feet, landing on his back on a concrete floor.

“Down I went,” Neff said Thursday morning during a news conference at Sunnyview Rehabilitation Center. “When I hit the ground, I instantly felt intense pressure in my back, and I had a pretty good, almost 100 percent feeling that I was paralyzed.”

Neff, who is from just outside Syracuse, underwent neurosurgery for eight hours after the accident. Then he was moved to Sunnyview, where he has undergone intensive therapy.

During the past couple of months, Neff has learned how to move on his own, painstakingly, with leg braces that hold his knees stiff and a pair of crutches. But what brought him face-to-face with a pack of flashing cameras was a piece of technology that has exciting implications for many paraplegics and their physical therapists.

Neff is the first patient at Sunnyview to include the ReWalk Robotic Exoskeleton System as part of his therapy routine. The exoskeleton, which costs about $100,000, is one of just a handful in the country. The hospital only received its unit a few weeks ago, after purchasing it entirely with funds given philanthropically by individuals and raised during charity events.

“The smile on a patient’s face and the feeling of independence is priceless,” said Kathie Ziobrowski, executive director of the Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation. “However, the technology is not.”

Ziobrowski expressed excitement at the opportunities the new technological acquisition could provide to the approximately 2,400 inpatients and more than 10,000 outpatients who make use of Sunnyview’s facilities and equipment each year.

Patricia Valenza, a physical therapist at Sunnyview and assistant director of the hospital’s Neuro-Rehab Institute, said the device is the first she’s seen in her 25-year career that could potentially replace wheelchairs as a mobility option for people with paralysis in their lower bodies.

She described the surprisingly intuitive ways patients control the device: After turning on the exoskeleton with a wrist controller, the patient leans forward to set the legs in motion. They make a sound like a robot from an action movie, but they allow Justin’s knees to bend, which he likes much better than struggling with his stiffly braced legs.

“In order to stop, Justin will scuff his foot,” Valenza said, and he did.

He pivoted and did it again, allowing videographers to scrunch down and videotape his sneaker-clad feet as they stepped deliberately along the meeting room floor.

Someone asks if he’s tired, and hospital staff who know Neff laugh.

“No, I could keep going and going,” he said.

Neff’s reputation is that of an inexhaustible patient who will spend hours at therapy, then go to the gym or the pool for more work.

His mother, Brenda, who attended the news conference, said he’s always been stubborn.

“I tell you what, sometimes it’s not a bad thing,” she said. “He’s got a long way to go, but he’s come a long way.”

In addition to being naturally tough to rattle, Neff has set the bar high for himself in terms of recovery: He plans to walk again, and soon. As soon as a year from now, Neff said, he pictures himself walking, even if he’s not great at it.

His spinal fracture, though life-altering, is considered an incomplete spinal cord injury, which means there is hope for recovery. The ReWalk is the only exoskeleton approved by the FDA for home use, and Neff said if he ends up needing one of his own, he’ll find a way to raise the funds for it.

But he hasn’t resigned himself to thinking of it as anything more than a means to an end just yet.

“The ReWalk is a great thing for me. It feels very natural, about as natural as I think I can get, as opposed to regular walking,” he said. “If it was a complete injury at this point, I’d say absolutely, I want something like this.

“Right now, I’m going to try to focus on getting everything I can back,” he said.

Neff will return home at the end of January, where he’ll continue his recovery. The exoskeleton will remain at Sunnyview, where other patients can use it to take one noisy, robotic step at a time toward their own recovery goals.

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