Tyler Rolison - The Will to Walk

I think most of us live with an the knowledge that tragedy is often just a phone call away but we never really believe that it will happen to us.  It crosses our mind from time to time but the reality of it escapes us until that dreaded phone call comes and changes our lives forever.  As our family celebrated Christmas in December, 2011, we were blissfully unaware that tragedy was just a few days away.  We assumed that our lives would go on as usual and that any challenges we faced would be minor and easy to overcome.  However, on December 29, 2011 our lives were changed forever in ways we could never have imagined.  On that day, Tyler was involved in a horrific automobile accident and, at the age of 17, suffered a Spinal Cord Injury and became a quadriplegic.  The car had flipped five times and the roof was crushed except for a small space on the driver side window where Tyler’s head came to rest.  His survival that day was truly a miracle from God and, in spite of Tyler’s spinal cord injury, our family is humbled and awed that Tyler’s life was spared.

How does a young man of 17 deal with such a life changing event?  No one would blame him for being angry, depressed, or for looking backwards and wishing for life to be as it was before that cruel day when life changed so drastically.  Tyler has had all of those feelings but in spite of it all, he has been incredibly positive.  He has dealt with challenges that most of us will never have to face.  He can’t walk, although he has limited use of his arms, his hands don’t work, he can’t get out of bed by himself, he can’t dress himself, the list goes on and on.  He has been hospitalized numerous times with deadly urinary tract infections that threatened his life.  In the past year Tyler was hospitalized more than 60 days.  He can’t go out with his friends as easily as he did before and at times he feels lonely and he wishes for a “normal” life.   I hate it when he says that “I wish I was normal again.”  However, in spite of the loneliness, the challenges of daily living, and the illnesses, Tyler has shown a resilience that has amazed everyone who knows him.  He maintains a positive attitude most of the time, he goes to ballgames, visits friends and frequently visits patients at Shepherd Center to provide whatever insight he can on living with spinal cord injury.  He is quite an amazing person!

If wishes, dreams, working out and will cured a spinal cord injury then Tyler would be running marathons by now.  They don’t but nerves do!  There is much research being done in the treatment of spinal cord injuries and nerve regeneration and there is hope for possible healing on the horizon.  We recently learned of an Orthopedic Surgeon in Texas who is using stem cells to treat people with spinal cord injuries and his patients are regaining some mobility.  These stem cells are taken from the patient’s own body – no embryonic stem cells are used.  Stem cells are the cells that promote healing to damaged tissue and they are carried by the blood.   Since the spinal cord is not a vascular system, there is not a lot of blood flow to it so stem cells cannot naturally repair damaged tissue in the spinal cord.  They have to be delivered to the spinal cord in a different way.  The first procedure Tyler will have involves a surgery to cut open the dura (protective cover surrounding the brain and spinal cord), flush the damaged area of the spinal cord with stem cells, and re-close the dura.  This procedure is just now being studied in the United States and has not been approved so the doctor will do the surgery in Cyprus at an American clinic. After the initial procedure, follow-up stem cell injections are done every six months in Texas and no surgery is required for these follow-up treatments.

We wanted to learn more about this procedure and we met with the doctor in September.  He is an amazing man and we were very impressed with him.  He was very straight-forward, he explained everything thoroughly, and we have decided to go forward with this procedure in hopes that Tyler can get some relief from his paralysis.  The doctor took some x-rays and found that the vertebrae which was damaged the most had healed in such a way that it is compressing some of the nerves coming off the spinal cord.  He plans to fix the vertebrae and there is a possibility that Tyler may gain some benefits from having that done in addition to the stem cell procedure.  The doctor stated that healing is possible but nothing is guaranteed.  However, there have been positive results from the surgery and we believe that we have to give Tyler this chance for a possible recovery.  The hope is that the spinal cord will heal and that Tyler will gain at least some of the function that he has lost.  Recovery will take time and we will have to be patient.  We do not know what improvement Tyler may gain but we can’t let this opportunity pass us by.  We hope to go to Cyprus for the initial procedure in the early part of 2015.

Tyler is excited about the possibility of healing and we want to get the procedure done as soon as possible.  Please join us in prayer for safe and uneventful travel, for the doctors and attendants who will take care of Tyler, and for healing for Tyler. We truly believe that God has provided this opportunity for Tyler and although we don’t know what the outcome will be, we believe that we are meant to do this and we have peace about it. Tyler has been given the miracle of a second chance at life and now the miracle of healing is a possibility.  May Tyler find God’s direction and accomplish what ever he is meant to do with his life.