Fighter, father hangs tough after paralyzing injury

[manouli]

Fighter, father hangs tough after paralyzing injury
Published: May 6th, 2011 | Source: timesunion.com

If Michael Jones did it, he knew he’d be spent for the day. He’s a quadriplegic with some sensation and bits of movement. But that morning as his nearly 3-year-old daughter, Liliana, climbed on him in the hospital bed he sleeps in at home, Michael just wanted to be a dad.

So he lifted his arm at the elbow, holding it somewhere between a 45- and 90-degree angle. Liliana threw her weight against his arm, and he pushed her back onto the bed, the way dads horse around with their wide-eyed, apple-cheeked toddlers.

It was good.

And it’s the new normal.

The new normal is what Michael’s wife, Lisa DeStaso-Jones, craved after months of unknowns and medical transfers. She didn’t know whether Michael would survive after his neck bore the weight of a collapsing rugby scrum during a February 2010 tournament in Florida. Over the coming months, Michael charged at therapy with the same fight he’d always shown on the rugby field. He’d spent three weeks in the ICU of a Florida hospital where he was on a ventilator, something doctors thought he might depend on for the rest of his life. He could not move. He could not speak. He could not breathe on his own.

He was at Kessler Rehabilitation Center in New Jersey for 100 days, where he slowly shed the ventilator and was able to shrug his shoulders. He spent seven months at the Good Samaritan Lutheran Health Care Center in Delmar, where the physical and occupational therapists made Michael’s rehabilitation their mission.

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