A Long Walk Down the Aisle

Breakthrough technology offers hope for patients with central nervous system injuries and helps give back a simple part of life.

 
Like many stroke victims, Vince Mikol’s day started out as normal as any other, yet ended up as a nightmare. The Rancho Palos Verdes resident was eating supper in April 2006 with his wife, Mary Ann, when he realized something was wrong. He could feel his right side going numb and then he fell to the floor. He told his wife to call 911 and within 10 minutes the paramedics arrived. Since he never lost consciousness, Mikol was able to assess from the paramedics’ demeanor that he was in big trouble.

“I had a hemorrhagic stroke, which means there was bleeding in my brain,” Mikol said. “I found out later that about 85 percent of people who have these types of strokes don’t make it. I was very lucky.”

 
After a month in the hospital, and a few setbacks — including a pulmonary embolism — the 61-year-old Mikol was transferred to the Rehabcentre at Little Company of Mary – San Pedro Hospital. He began a rigorous rehabilitation schedule that included three hours of therapy, five days a week, and three and a half hours on Saturday.

As luck would have it, during this time Mikol’s daughter, Melissa, was in the midst of planning her wedding for March 2007.

“Here I was, with such limited mobility, looking at my daughter and thinking, ‘I need to walk her down the aisle in less than a year; I need to get to work,’” Mikol said.

For the next 10 months, Mikol’s goal was to accompany Melissa down the aisle at her wedding — without the use of a cane. He worked tirelessly with his therapist, Teri Mogavero, PT, to improve his walking, stamina and other stroke-related physical limitations.

Mikol tried electrical stimulation therapy, but it did not provide the breakthrough he was looking for. However, an ankle-foot brace helped a great deal, because it enabled his foot to clear the floor when he walked.

Central nervous system injuries, such as strokes, often result in foot drop — the inability to raise the foot at the ankle — leading to instability and difficulty walking. This was a major obstacle in Mikol’s rehabilitation.

“It is very frustrating,” Mikol said. “I remember being so grumpy and irritable because I was working so hard, day after day, and I was only taking baby steps. The progress was so slow and arduous; some days it was hard for me to tell if I was progressing at all.”

Then, in a meeting one day with Anh Long, MD, medical director of the Rehabcentre, Mikol was introduced to the NESS L300™. This neuro-rehabilitation system, manufactured by Bioness® Inc., is a revolution in Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) technology, designed to help patients experiencing foot drop to regain mobility and help “normalize” gait.

“It was unbelievable,” Mikol said. “The Bioness representative put the electrodes on my leg, put the sensor in my shoe and said, ‘go walk.’ And I did.”   Continue »

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