The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
In lieu of our regular meeting, the Chapter will be hosting its annual picnic at Camp Crooked Creek. See announcement below for more details. Food will be provided by the Chapter. If you have questions, feel free to contact me. I hope to see everyone there.
October’s meeting will be held at Frazier Institute, 220 Abraham Flexnor Way, Louisville, 10th floor dining room, at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be provided.
- David Allgood
From UofL Magazine, summer 2007 RE-EDUCATING THE SPINAL CORD
By Dale Greet
March 25, 2006 was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday for Louisville businessman Mark Plummer. It began with breakfast at a Middletown clubhouse less than two blocks from Plummer’s home, after which he and a group of friends were scheduled to tee off for a round of golf. But halfway through breakfast, Plummer began to feel a sharp pain in the back of his head. Within minutes, it became so acute that golf was out of the question.
“I was able to drive myself home,” Plummer recalls, “but by the time I got there the pain was just terrible. Fortunately, my wife was home and called EMS. If she hadn’t done that I’d have probably laid down on the bed and died.”
With the help of X-rays and MRIs, doctors soon learned that Plummer had suffered a spontaneous hematoma at the top of his spine. “The bleeding formed a ball of blood that was compressing against my spine,” Plummer explains.
Surgeons at Norton Hospital were able to operate, but a substantial amount of spinal cord damage had already occurred, cutting off communication between brain and body. As Plummer lay in a recovery room following surgery, all he could do was blink his eyes. Thirteen hours earlier he was looking forward to a morning on the links. Now he was a quadriplegic who needed a Ventilator to stay alive.
Plummer spent the next four weeks in the hospital, followed by another four weeks of in-patient care at
