The Attribution of Miracles
The US Senate has returned from their winter recess. Next week, the NFL’s trudge through the bitter cold of Green Bay culminates with their Super Bowl in balmy Arizona.
The juxtaposition of these two events, one beginning and one ending, revolves around what is the most enduring story of the NFL’s season. And no, it is not the Patriot’s date with destiny. The incident to which I make reference is the injury to Kevin Everett. Everett is the NFL special teams player for the Buffalo Bills who broke his neck in the season’s first game. His recovery has been…well; many journalists called it a miracle. I believe, however, that fortunate is the better word.
As a moderator at Care Cure Community, the world’s largest website devoted to spinal cord injury (SCI), I’ve learned to listen to the voices of those living with paralysis. I know that the learning curve to understanding spinal cord injuries is long. That, however, should not be an excuse to persist in dumbing down the conversation.
Our culture already suffers from a stagnation of attitudes about disability in general, and SCI, in particular. Contributing to this entrenched ignorance are the many stories that only feed the public a sound bite version of life with paralysis. This leads to an arrested development of what needs to happen to change the future of this unique patient population.
Most spinal cord injuries occur in the real world, not the artificial bubble of a national sporting event. The attention foisted upon Everett stems from the Bread and Circuses spectacle that the NFL has become in our society. Therein, lay the problem with keeping his recovery in proper perspective.
When journalists first stalked the prey of this story, some sought the jugular of tragedy. Then, when Everett responded to treatment and/or the degree of spinal insult turned out more modest than originally suspected, headlines hamstrung the reader with the next best insider story: a miracle.
This is unfortunate. What the public needs to know about SCI to justify a commitment to seeking cures is what happens after the media has dropped their romantic notions of miraculous recovery. Long after dust has begun to collect on the trophy of the Patriot’s victory or the Giant’s upset, most folks with an SCI will still be living lives of tedious routines cemented in the popular fantasy of courage in the face of adversity.
Mr. Everett and his family preserved a laudable degree of privacy about his condition. They were careful not to fuel the frenzy for a scoop. Still, the attribution of the word miracle lingers.
The road to recovery from an SCI is not about miracles occurring in the back of an ambulance. Curative solutions to paralysis will be found in the workaday world of research labs. This goal will be achieved in the lifetimes of those injured now, only if our government decides to commit resources to the mysteries of paralysis. Legislation, to do just that, The Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act (CDRPA), is at hand but is stifled by partisan politics.
One man, Senator Tom Coburn, stands in the way of the hopes and dreams of thousands of Americans coping with the prison of paralysis. The Oklahoma Senator has become the Tanya Harding of the Republican Party, knee-capping the competition with his tactic of holding bills to prevent votes from proceeding in the Senate.
The CDRPA has cleared committee in both houses. The House of Representatives passed the bill in October of 2007. Now, five long years after its introduction, a single recalcitrant individual chooses to continue the procedural shenanigans.
Next week’s Super Bowl will come and go. Paralysis, however, comes and stays. Senator Coburn should stand aside and allow the CDRPA to proceed.
This bill is not a barrel of pork, nor is it the parochial favorite of an individual legislator. Paralysis does not recognize party lines, race, or religious views. The bill is clear: to provide funding for the National Institutes of Health to conduct research and to develop quality of life programs related to paralysis from whatever cause.
Solutions to the complexities of SCI cannot occur instantaneously. It will not be because an emergency room doctor throws a Hail Mary pass. The research will require the molecular level understanding of the spinal column’s biology. It will come only when our government invests in the vision that mundane research miracles are about hard work not guesswork. That change in attitude will be the real miracle.
The Other Side of Broken