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Paralyzed patient moves legs again after 23 years
20 patients with paraplegia are seeing improvements after receiving a spinal cord implant.
MINNEAPOLIS — More than 300,000 Americans live with spinal cord injuries, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, and many dream of walking again.
Crystal LaBo is one of them.
“I’ve always had the mindset that I would walk again someday,” LaBo said.
LaBo has paraplegia and has been in a wheelchair for 23 years.
She was involved in a car accident on Oct. 8, 1999 and hasn’t been able to walk since.
“When I was at the scene of the car accident we knew. I couldn’t feel anything from my chest down,” LaBo said.
Since her accident, LaBo has applied for nearly a dozen medical studies to see if she could get back some of the mobility in her legs.
“I was always turned down,” LaBo explains.
“The problem with mine is that my date for my injury is out so far. Most studies don’t include people that have the injury date out so far.”
In 2021 LaBo applied for a study at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis.
However, this time, doctors accepted her application.
“She is really our furthest out from injury,” Dr. David Darrow says.
Dr. Darrow is the principal investigator for Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute’s E-STAND clinical trial.
The trial has included 20 patients like LaBo who suffer from paralysis and are willing to have an epidural spinal cord stimulation implant surgically implanted near their spine.
For nearly 50 years, spinal cord stimulation has been used to help patients with chronic pain.
Dr. Darrow said doctors recently discovered that the technology could also be used to help paraplegic patients recover some movement.
“Over time what we have found is sure enough in 20 out of 20 patients we see significant effects across the board,” Dr. Darrow explains.
Doctors say patients have seen improvements in movement and mobility in their legs, improved blood circulation, and increased control over their bowels and bladders.
LaBo says she is experiencing improvements in all of those areas, and she is also experiencing an improvement in her body’s ability to regulate temperature.
“I used to be cold all the time and now I’m not. I’m much more comfortable now,” LaBo says.
LaBo and her husband Dustin live in Bryan, Ohio.
Together they have four kids, and they own a restaurant that specializes in grilled cheese.
“We have 16 to 18 different kinds of grilled cheese available,” Dustin LaBo said.
Crystal works nearly every job at the restaurant, including waiting tables, which has become a bit of a challenge since her legs started moving again
“So, I have a tray on my lap with food and drinks and my legs will kick up. The other day the tray kicked up and hit me in the fact,” LaBo laughs.
A small price to pay for everything she has gained these past two months.
“Every day I see a little more movement, a little more control. The first time she did it, I’ll never forget that look on her face. She was just like, it was the greatest day of her life, and she was like, ‘I did it. I did it,”’ Dustin LaBo said.
Dr. Darrow and his team are now building a case to get FDA approval.
They want to enroll at least 20 more patients to show how well their procedure works.
“Then my job is convincing insurance companies to pay for it, which is a big job, but we think results are robust enough and the cost is reasonable,” Dr. Darrow said.
Over time Dr. Darrow is hoping to bring this procedure to more patients like Crystal, who dreams of taking her first step in 23 years, and maybe even walking again.
“I’ll get there one day. It might take a while, but I’ll get there.”
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The crash happened when a Suburban pulling a trailer failed to stop at a stop sign, Minnesota State Patrol said.
WAUKENABO, Minn. — Two people from Minnetonka died in a crash Friday in Aitkin County while others, including children, were hurt.
According to Minnesota State Patrol, it happened at the intersection of Highway 169 and Grove Street/County Road 3 in Waukenabo Township at approximately 5:15 p.m.
A Suburban pulling a trailer was driving east on County Road 3 but did not stop at the stop sign at Highway 169, authorities said. The vehicle was struck by a northbound GMC Yukon. Two other vehicles were struck in the crash, but the people in those two cars were not injured.
In the Suburban, the driver sustained life-threatening injuries, according to State Patrol. Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, of Minnetonka, and Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, of Minnetonka, both died. Officials said the driver of the vehicle, a 61-year-old from Minnetonka, has life-threatening injuries.
There were six people in the Yukon when the crash occurred. The 44-year-old driver, as well as passengers ages 18, 14, and 11, sustained what officials described as life-threatening injuries. The other two passengers have non-life-threatening injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, but officials said Elizabeth Jane Baldwin had not been wearing a seatbelt.
Among those at the start line this year will be Alex Vigil.
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Pixar’s second installment of the movie features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” universe plays out inside the mind of the movie’s adolescent protagonist, Riley.
She plays a kid from Minnesota whose family uproots her life by moving to San Francisco. But did you know that what plays out in Riley’s mind actually comes from the mind of a real-life Minnesotan?
“You are one of us!” said Breaking the News anchor Jana Shortal.
“Yes, I am!” said Burnsville native and the movie’s creator and director, Kelsey Mann.
Mann was chosen for the role by ANOTHER Minnesotan — Pete Docter, the man behind the original movie, “Inside Out.”
“I don’t know if Pete asked me to do this movie because I was from Minnesota and he was from Minnesota … I just think it worked out that way,” Mann said.
How two guys from the south metro made a pair of Pixar movies that would change the game is a hell of a story that began with Docter in 2015.
“He [Docter] was just trying to tell a fun story — an emotional, fun story — and didn’t realize how much it would help give kids a vocabulary to talk about things they were feeling because they are feeling those emotions, but they’re really hard to talk about,” Mann said.
Some parents, counselors and teachers might even tell you it did more good for kids than just entertain them. It unlocked their emotions and begged for what Mann set out to create at the beginning of 2020.
“That part was fun, particularly fun,” he said. “I think the daunting part was following up a film that everyone really loved.”
But Mann knew what he wanted to do with the movie’s follow-up, “Inside Out 2.”
“Diving into Riley’s adolescence … that was just fun,” he said.
This time around, Riley is 13, hitting puberty and facing all of what, and who, comes with it. The franchise’s second installment features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
“I think that’s what’s fun about the ‘Inside Out’ world: You can take something we all know and give it a face,” Mann said. “We can give anxiety a name and a face.”
The film follows Riley’s emotions fighting it out for control of her life. Joy wants Riley to stay young and hold on only to joy, while anxiety is hell-bent on taking over Riley over at the age of 13 because as a lot of us know, that’s when anxiety often moves in.
“I always pitched it as a takeover movie, like an emotional takeover,” Mann said. “Anxiety can kind of feel like that; it can take over and kind of shove your other emotions to the side and repress them.”
For a kids’ movie, it’s hard to watch this animation play out, even when an adult has the keys to decide.
“I’m making a movie about anxiety and I still have to remind myself to have my anxiety take a seat,” Mann said.
All of our individual anxieties have a place in this world.
“The whole movie honestly is about acceptance. Both acceptance of anxiety being there and also of your own flaws,” said Mann.
Even for our kids, we have to remember that this is life.
Anxiety will come for them; it does for us all.
The “Inside Out” world just shows them it’s so.
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