Two decades after a cervical spinal cord injury, Ken Ryno became determined to walk again.
by Michael Lee
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Even though he’s been in a wheelchair for the past 23 years, Kenneth Ryno, 46, never let his spinal cord injury get the best of him. His doctors told him he would never walk again. He knew that within time, medicine and technology would improve, giving him and others a chance to walk again, but he wasn’t going to wait around for the next revolution in science technology. He simply focused on himself. “If I can’t get it done now then I’ll figure it out one way or another,” Ryno said.
The Return
At Warren Hills Senior High School in New Jersey, Ryno played a lot of sports-from baseball to football, it all came naturally to him. “I was into everything I could do,” he remembers. But one thing he couldn’t do almost cost him his life in 1979: A careless, alcohol-induced decision to ride a motorcycle without a helmet wound him up at Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where he spent 21 days in a coma. He was 18.
When he woke, Ryno learned he was paralyzed from the neck down. “My neck was broken. I hit so hard that I snapped my spinal cord. My left shoulder was fractured, left lung collapsed, and I had a burn right down to the right calf.” The accident resulted in an incomplete C-6-7 level spinal cord injury.
Ryno doesn’t remember so much how the accident happened, but he does remember how he felt. He was mad at himself, but never fell into depression. “I did this to myself, I can’t expect anyone to help me,” he told himself. “I just knew I had to become independent. My motto was, ‘If I can’t get it done now, I’ll figure it out one way or another.’”
He was transferred from Warren Hospital in June 1979 to Good Shepherd Rehab in Allentown, Pennsylvania. After he was discharged, he continued to work wherever he could get hired. Eventually, he found a job for the state of New Jersey as a word processing specialist.
Throughout the years, Ryno went through difficult times with his parents and ex-wife (with whom he shares a 16-yearold daughter). After he retired from his word processing job in 1998, he had a lot more free time. Twenty three years after his accident, Ryno developed pressure sores. “[The doctors] put me on a homebound status and asked if I’d like a physical therapist, and I said, sure, why not? I got myself stretched out everyday and remained healthy.”
When the therapist, JoAnn Sienkiewicz, met Ryno, she was surprised that he, a C6-7 quad, was able to grasp her hand. They eventually began dating and are now engaged to be married.
One day in the summer of 2003, Ryno was sitting by his swimming pool and “got to thinking what would be the last part that I lost before I had my accident?” He thought of his left foot, which he put on the pedal to shift. “I started focusing on my left foot in my swimming pool, focused on my left toe. I started wiggling it.” Joan decided to do a full-muscle strength test on him. Even though he couldn’t feel the responses in his muscles, she could.
Can a Quad Walk?
“If the injury is minor, it is possible for the patient to walk still,” says Bryan C. Hains, PhD, assistant professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at Yale University School of Medicine. “Typically, after injury, the patients suffer a great deal of spinal shock and no impulses are transmitted through the injury site. But over the course of weeks to months to possibly a year or so they can gain some motor function as the cord recovers slightly from the initial injury, and as they train other muscles to compensate.
It should be noted that this recovery is typically very subtle and occurs within maybe the first year after injury. Nothing really changes spontaneously beyond that. Motor skills can be relearned and muscle groups can be retrained to perform tasks,” he continues. “If for example some descending motor control tracts are undamaged by the SCI, they may be co-opted and used in new ways. This is similar to learning how to write with your opposite hand, balance on a snowboard, or play a musical instrument that requires manual dexterity. In this case its not so much that the spinal cord is regenerating, but that the brain is adapting.”
After being able to move his toe, Ryno was admitted to an inpatient rehab center managed by RehabCare Group in St. Louis. His first physical therapist, Tony Rehrig says that Ryno came into rehab with a lot of support, confidence, and strength. “At the time, he did have long leg braces locking his knees,” Rehrig said. “His ankles were in a fixed position so that he could put weight through them and by using his trunk he could throw his legs back and forth and take a step here or there. He was not doing that unassisted. He had a lot of help.”
Rehrig said that he worked with Ryno on “some standing balance type activities, a lot of trunk control . . . anything we could get that could facilitate muscle activities with visualization techniques.” He said that with “some level injuries, you can brace the legs but you can get that kind of return.” Ryno’s improvement in strength increased as well. “As we broke down the brace, he was basically demonstrating improvement in strength.”
Ryno attributes some of his success to the “Mind-Body Connection” and Myofascial Release treatment, developed by physical therapist John Barnes, which is a form of deep tissue massage. Not to say those techniques are for everyone, but Ryno feels it works for him. “He and his girlfriend are both spiritual people,” Rehrig said in response to the other techniques that Ryno uses.
Once in a Lifetime
Rehrig is impressed by his patient, whom he still keeps in touch with. “He’s a once-in-a- lifetime type patient where you don’t see that return,” said Rehrig. “His story is one of perseverance.” He also thinks that Ryno was “in the right place in the sequence of events.” But overall, he understands Ryno’s mission, “to get the message across to never give up,” he said.
Having the right attitude, putting in the exercise and work, and the advancements in technology are what gives other people hope, Ryno said. “There is no quick cure for SCI,” he added. “A lot of paraplegics once they lose the feelings in their body, they forget about it, which is something I haven’t done,” Ryno said. “My attitude was never, ‘I’ll never do this,’” he said. “I was never like that. I thank God for every day I get through, and the lessons that I learn. This is a give and take world, take what you can while you can, and don’t give in. Don’t forget your body parts.”
Ryno continues to travel around America as a motivational speaker and attends support group meetings.
Michael Lee is a regular contributor to Action.
