President’s Message
Director’s Notes
Kelly Honored by New York Mets
Sexual Health Survey
Your Ostomy Is Your Friend
Coordinated National Effort Needed To Develop New SCI Therapies
Terri Schiavo: Lessons Learned
The Bathroom Squeeze: Does the New NYC Code Set Back Residential Access?
United Spinal and Kessler Team Up for Consumer Education Series
It’s Not Easy
Shifting Gears
Outside the Frames
Monica Moshenko and DisAbility News and Views
Million Dollar Question: Is Million-Dollar Baby Anti-Disability Propaganda?
Murderball
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As I do rounds at the different hospitals, I am disturbed to see that our newly injured patients don’t have the benefit of talking with older members. These talks in the old days were an education that you could not get any place else. They were instrumental in getting you through rehabilitation. Some of the things I learned back then still serve me today. There was a time when the wards were full of newly injured patients, particularly during the Vietnam War. We hope not to see a repeat of that, but there will be plenty of veterans coming into the VA [...] I want to take the opportunity to publicly thank Thomas T. Hodne, A.I.A., for 30 years of dedicated and devoted service to the organization. Tom has been a member since 1962; he worked for the organization from May 1975 to May 2005. Tom was truly one of Jim Peters’ proudest finds, and for good reason. From the beginning, Tom was very motivated to help our members make their homes accessible. Tom’s greatest satisfaction was, to quote his words, “seeing members have a more active life because they were able to get in and out of their homes without calling the fire department.” Apparently, [...] The background As Compliance Specialist Linda Gutmann explained in last December’s Orbit, New York City’s 17-year-old accessibility requirements, Local Law 58 (LL58), will be replaced when the City adopts the International Building Code (IBC). However, the IBC requires that only 2% of the units in newly constructed apartment buildings that have 21 or more units comply with the adaptability requirements that New Yorkers with disabilities have enjoyed under LL 58’s accessibility standard, ANSI A117.1-1986. The life and death of Terri Schiavo showed the world the challenges people with severe disabilities face when they are unable to communicate their wishes. Unable to care for herself for 15 years, Schiavo had parents and siblings who so prized her life, they were willing to spend their own lives giving everything they could to maintain hers. It seems to me that this display of unconditional love gave Schiavo dignity during the darkest years of her life. They set examples for the world to emulate when caring for people with severe disabilities who can’t care for themselves. The summer of 1997: I’m a kid, watching a wrestling match on TV and all I can do is think, “Imagine if I was a wrestler, I’d be called The Dream! Because that’s all it is, is a dream.” I have watched wrestling on TV since I was very little. Some times for Halloween, I would dress up as a wrestler. One year I put on a bushy, yellow yarn “fu manchu” and went as my idol, Hollywood Hulk Hogan. One match I will never forget: Back in 1987, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant in front of 93,000 fans in Wrestle Mania [...] According to a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a multifaceted approach to research on spinal cord injuries—one that pursues combinations of therapies and ways to treat injuries at different stages—is needed to speed progress toward a cure. Colostomy, ileostomy, urostomy (urinary diversion)-any ostomy is not the end of the world. What is an ostomy? It is a surgically created opening in the abdomen, to which the small or large intestine is diverted for evacuating waste when the digestive system breaks down. It may be temporary or permanent depending on the individual. A stoma—the Greek word for “mouth”—is the part of the intestine that shows at the opening of the ostomy. It is shiny, wet, dark pink in color, and similar to the inside lining of one’s mouth. The cut itself is usually round or oval in shape; sizes vary. The [...] Crime can be very expensive for victims, beyond the loss of life, limb or property they entail. Out-of-pocket expenses caused by a crime may include the repair or replacement of essential personal property, loss of earning and support, unlimited medical bills and expenses including the cost of counseling, vocational rehabilitation, crime scene clean up, funeral bills, and more. Some of these costs may be covered by personal insurance, but too often, victims of crime learn how inadequate insurance can be. On Monday evening April 11th, the New York Mets Major League Baseball team presented their Ya Gotta Believe Award to Gerard M. Kelly, executive director of United Spinal Association, at the team’s annual Welcome Home Dinner to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The event was held in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton Hotel. Coming to a theater near you: An award-winning, hard-hitting documentary on quad rugby that blows away stereotypes about quadriplegia. The film opens on the image of a young man with close-cropped red hair and a flaming goatee in a dark sweat suit sitting on the edge of a bed. He lifts himself up by his muscular arms and transfers to a strange wheelchair with battered metallic shields protecting the spokes and begins to struggle with his pants. He slides them down long, pale legs, which he moves back and forth by hand, to reveal black athletic shorts and dark tribal-style tattoos on his [...] Not Dead Yet and movie critics are still arguing over the Oscar-winning film from Clint Eastwood. Some movies are designed to make audiences think. For certain members of the disability community, four-time Oscar® winner Million Dollar Baby, about a grizzled old trainer in the 1930s taking on a promising young woman boxer to mentor only to see her incapacitated by a brutal blow, brings to mind an unresolved question: Is Hollywood stacking the deck against disability? Wanted: 50-year-old single mom with little money and no media experience-holding a full-time day job while raising an autistic child-to launch weekly radio talk show for the disabled community. Major media outlets largely indifferent, but people with disabilities likely to tune in. Exhausting hours with no assistants; blind faith and fierce determination a plus. This imaginary classified ad is one that Monica Moshenko might have unwittingly answered last year after the owner of a small, family-owned country radio station in Lancaster, New York agreed to rent her an hour every Sunday evening for a talk show focusing on people with disabilities. Lou Schriver, owner [...] Volkswagen of America, Inc. and VSA arts are proud to partner together for the fourth year in presenting an unprecedented opportunity for young artists with disabilities. The program, meant to encourage and recognize emerging talent in the visual arts, is made possible through the generous financial assistance of Volkswagen of America, Inc. Young artists with disabilities are asked to submit artwork in the form of slides for consideration in a touring exhibit that will debut at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Finalists will be selected on aesthetic merit alone by a distinguished jury panel. Standing jury [...] I live an ordinary life. Like my neighbors in suburbia, I am a parent, live in a nice home, shop at the local grocery store, buy gas for my car at the self-serve station, complain about the school system, and bemoan escalating tax bills. Again, like others, I am active in my son’s school and, much to my chagrin, accept that a majority of my social life revolves around activities such as Boy Scouts, hockey, and archery. Despite the ordinary life I lead, I stick out like a sore thumb. When I enter a room or meeting, people instantly know who I am. [...] United Spinal Association and the Northern New Jersey Spinal Cord Injury System (NNJSCIS) are teaming up to present a consumer-oriented medical education conference entitled, Life After Spinal Cord Injury: A Dialogue About Maintaining Health. This day-long event will be held at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey on June 17, 2005. The event is designed as a consumer education conference that will address key medical issues affecting people with spinal cord injury and disease (SCI/D). These conferences will be directed towards people with SCI/D, their families and friends, and interested professionals. I am conducting a research study to determine more details about the sexual dysfunctions experienced by men and women with spinal cord injuries. The information gained from this study will be used to help scientists and medical doctors develop experiments addressing different sexual dysfunctions, with the aim of developing therapeutic treatments for people living with SCI. |
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