SCI Life: January 2016


Dutch Paraplegic Fighting for a Cure
Growing up in Northeast France, then moving to the Netherlands as an adult, Corinne Jeanmarie relished her nondisabled life. In her early 30s, she was living in Java, Indonesia, and working as a purchasing manager, a career full of travel and meeting new people every day.

Corinne-Jeanmarie

At 47, while taking a cab with a friend, the car veered off the road, and Jeanmarie was ejected from the car. “I woke up on the side of the highway, being hardly able to breathe and not feeling anything below my waist,” she says. Following the accident, as a T10-12 paraplegic, she was forced back to Amsterdam — something that broke her heart. “My accident didn’t just mean losing my body, it meant losing a job that I loved. It meant losing Indonesia, the country that I loved living in. It meant losing people that I loved.”

After her injury, she went into a deep depression, but like so many before her, she sincerely believed she could walk again if she worked hard enough. “But I didn’t,” she says, “in spite of getting a second opinion and going to France for a second surgery.”

Trying to adjust to a new normal, she worked a different job with the same company in the Netherlands, but was never truly satisfied. When her job went away in 2014, she decided to finally start Endparalysis, a foundation dedicated to finding a cure for spinal cord injury.

The foundation’s current focus is on chondroitinase research. And although it’s a one-woman show, she flies around the world, committed to the cause. A true believer in a cure and living a full life while she waits, Jeanmarie has figured out the hope/real-life balance perfectly.

Check out her website: www.endparalysis.org

Derek-Herrera,-via-YouTube

World’s First ‘Smart’ Catheter
Derek Herrera, a T6-7 paraplegic from San Clemente, Calif., injured when he was hit by an enemy sniper while serving in Afghanistan in 2012, has used his time since becoming paralyzed to create a device the paralyzed community has been waiting for — the world’s first “smart” catheter. Intended to be changed monthly, this semi-permanent catheter has a sensor inside that tells your smart phone when your bladder is full. For those with flaccid and neurogenic bladders, this technology could be life-changing.

Called the Connected Catheter, it has a valve and miniaturized pressure sensor, and it can be inserted by the user. The device is still in development and Herrera is seeking funding (he was holding a crowdfunding fundraiser at the time this article was written). Provided it does get the funding and FDA approval, the Connected Catheter could change the future of catheterization.

Amped Up Hair Tool
Attention quads sporting long locks: A new hair-straightening device called DAFNI essentially enables a C5-7 quad to straighten her hair independently. It is a heated brush that straightens your hair as you slowly brush it. The cost is a whopping $300, but standard hair straighteners usually require full dexterity, so it just may be worth it. Female quads are raving about this device on Facebook.

See for yourself: www.dermstore.com/product_Hair+Straightening+Ceramic+Brush_63616.htm


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