The Voice

Life can change in an instant. One second a passionate dancer, competitive softball player or dedicated U.S. Marine, the next, they’re given no hope to ever walk again.

Those are just a few stories of people who are using Project Walk Orlando (PWO) and trainers to learn to walk again. The nonprofit organization, located in Longwood, is part of Project Walk based in California. The organization offers people with spinal cord injuries (SCI) who are paralyzed a place to participate in pioneering exercise-based recovery.

“We teach you that there’s more,” said Amanda Perla, a client and daughter of PWO founder Liza Riedel.

Their method

The most common method of rehabilitation for SCI is to compensate for what the body can’t do below the point of injury, for example teaching patients how to function in their wheelchairs. It was thought that the brain couldn’t regain control below that point — that the nervous system couldn’t reorganize to communicate movements like walking.

Research and the organization’s success have proven that isn’t true.

Project Walk’s method is to use exercises that occur during human development, to try to retrain the body’s nervous system and create a new neural pattern. The trainers move their clients’ legs and bodies the way they would if they were walking, hoping their nervous system will recognize and improve enough so they can walk on their own.

PWO is one of 17 facilities across the U.S., and has helped more than 50 clients regain physical sensation and movement, confidence and hope.

How it started

PWO started with a tragedy. Liza Riedel got a phone call in the middle of the night in April 2007 with news no parent can imagine hearing. Her daughter had been in a terrible car accident and was paralyzed.

“This has got to be a nightmare,” Riedel thought.

Doctors gave her daughter no hope of walking again, and after some time in the hospital and a rehabilitation center, they sent Amanda Perla, then 18, home to do physical therapy. But it wasn’t enough. She was surrounded by depressed people, long past being hopeful of recovering from their own injuries. Therapists were teaching her how to live in a wheelchair, and not how to get out of one.

“It wasn’t good enough for us,” Riedel said. “We thought there has got to be something else.”

Soon they found Project Walk in California, and raised funds to make a few trips to explore their rehabilitation program. The improvements were amazing, and Perla even saw people walking again when she was there. But the family didn’t have the money to continue traveling to California.

Riedel was a mom on a mission, and two years later they opened their own facility in Longwood. Now their organization helps people who travel from all over Florida, the eastern U.S. and Canada. While they are a nonprofit, trainers cost $100 per hour. They’re hoping to start a client assistance program to fund the two- to three-hour sessions. For now, they get support from local groups. The Maitland Men’s Club has helped by purchasing a vital — and expensive — piece of equipment for

them.

“There are folks in need,” said Phil Bonus, president of the men’s club. “Once one recognizes and observes the need, then you just reach inside your heart and yourself and you step up and assist if you can.”

Offering hope

Now Perla is surrounded by people who are enthusiastic and determined. There isn’t a single person at PWO who says walking can’t be a possibility.

“I never felt like I had to be embarrassed to say that I want to walk again to anyone here,” she said. “This place offers that hope and it has the physical ability to back it … there are results.”

Ellen Becker, who moved from Ohio to Altamonte Springs to be closer to their program, feels the same way. She loves being around people who are focused on making their lives better.

After a car accident left her paralyzed two years ago at only 18, doctors said she would be blind, have the mental abilities of a third-grader and not be able to move from the shoulders down. None of that is true today.

Becker said she can’t wait to walk into her old doctor’s office, and she’s hopeful that’s possible after seeing improvements in her core strength, balance and feeling sensation in her legs.

“It just makes you feel unstoppable,” she said.

And that’s one quality everyone who comes to PWO has in common. They know that it’s an uphill battle, and that recovery will take a lifetime, but they’re willing to make the effort. Client Michael Carter, of Tampa, has his military background and family to push him.

“I don’t give up,” he said. “I have a Marine mentality.”