Just two weeks before his high school graduation in 2002, Josh McNeal was hurled from a crashing car after its driver failed to negotiate a turn. Speed was to blame, and it left McNeal in a coma — a coma from which he wouldn’t wake for five months.
When he did, he had lost the use of the right side of his body.
The nightmare that began six years ago is now almost over, thanks to a new technology that zaps the nerves in his legs, encouraging muscles to lift his foot.
McNeal, who still struggles with his speech, said he is “walking normal,” which makes him feel “really good.”
“It’s one more step closer for him being where he wants to be,” said his mother, Belinda Sewell, of Cordova on the Eastern Shore.
McNeal suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash, in which the driver and another passenger suffered only minor injuries. It left him with a condition known as “foot drop,” where he was unable to fully lift his foot, catching his toes as he walks. His walk is jerky and exhausting, Sewell said.
Foot drop can occur in patients with a brain injury, stroke, cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.
After regaining the ability to walk, McNeal relied on a clunky plastic brace, which helped but was uncomfortable, his mother said.
“It didn’t look good, and it was awkward and sweaty,” she said in a phone interview.
His doctors at Johns Hopkins told him about a new technology being offered by a local company, Dankmeyer Orthotics and Prosthetics, based in Linthicum. The system, which replaces the brace, uses electrical stimulation to retrain the leg muscles.
The device, called the NESS L300, straps onto a patient’s leg and sends a shock to the nerves through electrodes stuck to the skin. A second piece fixes to the shoe, sensing when the patient is standing or moving.
“It’s just a completely different approach to fixing someone’s walking problems,” said Mark Hopkins, clinical director at Dankmeyer.
The manufacturer, Calif.-based Bioness Inc., took a simple concept practiced for years in a lab using large machines and made it wireless and easy to use, Hopkins said.
Other companies make similar technologies, but this one is “state-of-the-art,” said Gad Alon, associate professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation science at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The technology also may improve movement over time, and some patients make gains even after they’ve taken off the device, Hopkins and Alon said.
“We begin to affect not just the periphery but also the central nervous system of the brain. We hope the overall recovery will be much better,” Alon said.
But studies haven’t been done to determine how many people reach a point at which they don’t need the device at all, he said.
In the four months since McNeal has been strapping on the device, he has been able to walk three or four miles without tiring, Sewell said. He can now work an eight-hour shift as a helper at a construction site. He can drive, mow the lawn, fish and hunt.
“The more he can get back the use of his limbs and voice, the better he feels,” his mother said. “He is like everybody else and wants to live a normal life.”
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