Yes, it’s possible: Paralyzed men can be dads

updated 12:06 p.m. ET March 25, 2007

CHICAGO - In the weeks following the car accident that left him paralyzed below the waist, Geoff Luther was haunted by worries that he’d lost the chance to be a father.

“It was some of the stuff I was thinking about the most,” said Luther. “What about having children? What about getting married? Can you naturally conceive a family?”

His questions are shared by thousands of young men each year who suffer paralyzing spinal injuries. But many may give up hope — or undergo unnecessary, invasive procedures — because their doctors don’t know about simple ways to help them.

Geoff was 28 years old and working for his father’s tool and dye company in Milwaukee in 1991 when his car rolled over on the icy road after a deer hunting trip. After the accident, he grew closer to a woman he had met while both were dating other people. Tammy Russell, who thought Geoff was “arrogant” before the accident, found herself drawn to a man who had changed physically and emotionally.

She fell in love and in 1993 married the man who showed her a determined spirit and a growing ability to appreciate life.

“If I want him to do something, I tell him he can’t do it,” she said.

Doctors at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago told Geoff, 43, that most men with spinal cord injuries can father children. But the treatments that allowed him and Tammy, 39, to conceive aren’t offered to many injured men.

Instead some fertility doctors jump immediately to expensive, invasive procedures, such as surgically extracting sperm from the testes, when confronted by a man in a wheelchair.

Simple techniques can work
The Luthers, who live in Oak Brook, Ill., avoided that procedure. Nonetheless, it took six years and, they acknowledge frankly, tens of thousands of dollars, some contributed by his father, before they succeeded. But after a tour through most of the methods and procedures of rehab fertility medicine, the Luthers conceived their son, Trent, now 6, and daughter Kayla, now 3.

“We went through it all,” Tammy said.

Their story illustrates how determined couples can conceive with guidance from medical professionals who are well-versed in techniques that work for paralyzed men.

What helped in Geoff’s case was a device that triggers ejaculation with a low-voltage impulse of electricity, a procedure borrowed from animal husbandry and developed for use in humans by Dr. Carol J. Bennett and her colleagues at the University of Michigan’s urology department.

Geoff remembers asking his doctor: “How will you know when you have it turned up high enough? Will my ears start smoking or what?”

The low-voltage impulse worked for Geoff, but his sperm quality was low. So, a single sperm was injected into one of Tammy’s eggs to create an embryo. That embryo was implanted in the womb and Trent was conceived. A few years later, Kayla was conceived the same way.

“I loved being pregnant,” Tammy said.

Unfortunately, many fertility centers don’t know the basics.

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