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Winter Travel
On one of her 70 trips since her injury in 1989, Kelly Giannattasio
poses in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Misc.
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: Resolutions
DIRECTOR’S NOTES: Strengthening the Organization
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: What’s In Store
LEGISLATIVE NEWS: January 2007
Congress Passes Bill to Expand Respite Care Services
New Congress Leaders Say Stem Cell Research Will Be a Top Priority
Restoring the Americans with Disabilities Act
RESEARCH FRONT: January 2007
Survivors of Childhood Polio Do Well Decades Later As They Age
MS Rates for Canadian Women Alarms Researchers
Discovery in SCI Pain Relief
PROGRAM NOTES: January 2007
United [...]
As we begin a new year, I want to ask you to consider taking actions that benefit others and that can make a big difference in your life as well.
The first thing I would like to suggest is that you contact someone from your past and say hello. Reach out and tell them about the positive things they have done to affect your life. We all have friends and loved ones we have lost touch with and reconnecting would be mutually beneficial.
By now you have received, and hopefully have had the opportunity to review, proposed bylaw changes mailed to you last month. With the change in our organization’s name three years ago and our expanded mission, it was essential to overhaul our governing and procedural rules.
The proposed revisions were the result of lengthy review and deliberation by a board-appointed committee composed of board members and members-at-large whose knowledge and experience we hold in the highest esteem.
Alfred Hitchcock famously defined suspense by invoking a scene in a movie in which two people are innocuously chatting and, without warning, a bomb under the table goes off. Now compare that with a scene in which the audience knows there’s a bomb under a table at which two people are innocuously chatting. “In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion,” Hitchcock said. “In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense.”
A similar principle is at work on me knowing what will be in coming issues [...]
Congress Passes Bill to Expand Respite Care Services
Thanks to the hard work of advocates across the country, Congress recently approved legislation that would provide help to the nearly 50 million caregivers nationwide. The Lifespan Respite Care Act of 2005 (H.R. 3248/S.1283) was passed by the House on December 6 and by the Senate on December 8, 2006. This bill, which the President is expected to sign, authorizes $289 million for grants to help build accessible, community-based respite care services. This includes funding for developing state and local respite programs, training and recruiting respite care workers and volunteers, and providing information [...]
Survivors of Childhood Polio Do Well Decades Later As They Age
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that years after experiencing childhood polio, most survivors do not experience declines greater than expected in their elderly counterparts, but rather experience only modest increased weakness which may be commensurate with normal aging.
“Other researchers have suggested that polio is a more aggressive condition later in life, but we’ve actually found it to be relatively benign,” said Eric Sorenson, MD, Mayo Clinic neurologist and lead study researcher. “Our results suggest that polio survivors may not age any differently than those in the normal population— they’re not [...]
United Spinal Becomes a Member of NCIL
United Spinal Association has recently joined the ranks of thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations across the country who have become members of the National Council on Independent Living, commonly known as NCIL. Founded in 1982, with its national headquarters in Washington, DC, NCIL is the oldest cross-disability, grassroots organization run by, and for, people with disabilities. NCIL’s message is clear and mirrors United Spinal’s mission and purpose: Independent living by envisioning a world where people with disabilities are valued equally and participate fully.
As a member of NCIL, United Spinal will become [...]
A travel agent with paraplegia, Kelly Giannattasio shares some traveling tips she’s picked up from personal experience.
By Tiffiny Carlson
Kelly Giannattasio, 33, of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, didn’t plan to become a travel agent while in college. “I had just graduated with my degree in Exercise Physiology four months before the injury.” Giannattasio, a T-6 complete paraplegic, was injured in a Jeep rollover accident in Santa Barbara, California, back in 1998.
Knowing her previous professional goal of becoming a physical trainer would be out of the question, Giannattasio decided to answer an ad looking for travel counselors. “I figured it was [...]
Looking to get back into the sport of downhill skiing, or to try it for the first time? Here are a few things you will want to know before you plan a trip.
By Beth Livingston
The author poses with Dave Donaldson, recreation therapist
for C-5 (combat casualty care center) at Balboa
Naval Medical Center, San Diego, and Mohawkie,
a service dog sponsored by Life Is Good!, while attending
the Ski Spectacular in Breckenridge, Colorado, last month.
Editor’s Note: In the February 2006 Action, former Paralympic skier Beth Livingston wrote the following about her return to the slopes after [...]
United Spinal Association is on the fast track to raise awareness about disabilities by focusing on America’s love affair with the automobile.
By Tom Scott
Ever since the first petrol-fueled automobiles were invented by German Engineers Karl Friedrich Benz and Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler at the end of the 19th Century, motorsports has woven itself into the fabric of our society. As the engines have become bigger and the cars they power sleeker, a wide variety of motorsports started heating up tracks around the globe. From kart racing, autocross and rallycross to stock car, open wheel and drag racing-the appeal of automobiles [...]
United Spinal Board member Denise Mc Quade’s struggle with polio as a child steeled her for the larger struggle of advocating for the civil rights of people with disabilities
By Rob Ingraham
Board member Denise Mc Quade educated
United Spinal staff about her condition at a recent
“Lunch and Learn” seminar on post-polio.
For most of us, the word “polio” conjures up black and white images from the 1950s: school kids lined up for vaccinations, clumsy metal and leather leg braces, a doctor named Jonas Salk, and a fearsome device known as an “iron lung.”
During the early 1950s, more than 20,000 new [...]
The President of American Paraplegia Society (APS) talks with Action about the society, her practice, and what they mean for people with spinal cord dysfunction.
Indira Lanig, MD, is the first African-American woman to become president of APS. She is in the second year of her three-year term. Taking time out from her busy schedule as physician at Craig Hospital in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Lanig graciously consented to share with Action something about herself, her research, and her hopes for APS during her term of office.
How long have you been a member of APS? What roles have you played there before [...]
An exciting program for people with quadriplegia provides LASIK surgery to qualifying candidates at no charge.
By Lori A. Wood
Dr. Robert Maloney consults with Courtney Henrichs.
(Photo by Nicole Miller Maloney)
Wearing glasses or contact lenses can be bothersome to anyone, but especially to quadriplegics, who may not have the manual dexterity to keep lenses clean or to place contacts on the eye. Thanks to the Focus on Independence program, which provides free LASIK surgery to eligible people who are quadriplegic, many are now able to turn an eye toward freedom.
“The program [...]
By Rosemarie Rossetti, PhD
A stacked washer-dryer, like the one in Mark Mix’s
home, works against universal design principles.
The Mix Residence
Recently, I was invited to the home of Mark and Jasue Mix in Warsaw, Ohio, to take a look at the universal design features they included when building their 4,400-squarefoot, ranch-style home. The family graciously agreed to share things they would have liked to have done differently in designing the house. Since I am in the process of completing the design for my new home, the Universal Design Living Laboratory, (www.udll.com) I [...]
By Tamar Asedo Sherman
To tell or not to tell: that is the question facing many workers with hidden disabilities. There is no reason to tell your current or perspective employer about your disability unless you are asking for an accommodation. You cannot expect an accommodation unless you disclose that you have a disability and, therefore, require an accommodation to carry out the essential functions of the job.
And the employer cannot ask if you have a disability, or what the nature of your disability is, if it is obvious that you are using a wheelchair. The employer can only [...]
By Ed Lash
The National MS Society recently reported that a new study found a modest link between stress and acute attacks of multiple sclerosis (MS). To date, we don’t know the exact relationship between stress and the onset or progression of MS, but what is stress anyway?
Hans Selye, often called the father of stress, defines it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand placed upon it.” In other words, stress is the body’s reaction to any event or stimulus (stressor) that demands a response. There are many types of stressors, ranging from everyday annoyances such as traffic [...]
By Kathleen M. Muldoon
Happy New Year! Ah, yes, another new year-a time to start all over again, a time to rebuild ourselves into new and improved models. At least that’s my goal each new year-is it yours, too? These desires for improvement are often called “New Year resolutions” and are formed with the best of intentions. If you’re like me, each January 1, you choose one or two things about yourself that you think just might need improvement. Also if you’re like me, you work on those things for about a day or two and then decide that the old [...]
By Tom Scott
United Spinal and NYC Parks Unveil New Giants Wheelchair Football Field
United Spinal Executive Director Paul J. Tobin and Director of Sports and Recreation Bill Hannigan joined New York City Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe and former New York Giants fullback Charles Way to dedicate the first wheelchair football field in New York State at Victory Field in Forest Park, Queens.
“Parks is proud to add an official wheelchair football field to our other accessible programs, which already include wheelchair basketball, ballroom dancing, aquatic therapy, and Playgrounds for All Children,” said Commissioner Benepe. “It is one of the [...]
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