Life After Paralyzation

I chose this Ted Talk because I actually met Janne Kouri recently when volunteering at his Ride for Paralysis event. He and his team were riding bicycles from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. to raise funds and awareness of the need for better rehabilitation centers for those living with spinal cord injury. 

In his Ted Talk, he tells more about his personal story and his realization of the hole in our healthcare system regarding patients with spinal cord injury. His doctors told him he had no hope for recovery and that he should just "get used to playing board games the rest of his life." That line was absolutely chilling and infuriating for me to hear. Our job as healthcare professionals is not to take away all hope nor to give false hope. While we can present evidence to our client, every case is different so there is truly no way to know the outcome for that individual.

Luckily, Kouri did not listen to this doctor and searched for rehabilitation facilities that could provide him a chance for recovery. This is where he became aware of the lack of progressive rehabilitation centers, as the closest he could find to his home in California was one in Kentucky. Kouri continually addresses the extreme privilege he had in being able to afford pursing rehab so far away. People of lower socioeconomic status could not afford such treatment and most insurances would not cover the loco-motor therapy that had helped him so much. Healthcare inequality is something I have often had to consider but this part of the video illustrated that if a major medical event were to happen, many Americans (myself included) would just be out of luck.

Janne Kouri's personal resilience is inspiring enough but he then took the disparity he saw and made it his mission to change it. He created his own rehabilitation facility called NextStep that started in his home city of LA and has since partnered with several other facilities across the nation. Stories such as this remind us that everyone deserves a chance. My hope is that in both my personal life and professional life as an OT I can help level the playing field in regards to healthcare access.

Citation:

Kouri, J. (2013, December). Janne Kouri: Life after paralyzation [Video file]. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCxCFjmruSg 

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