‘I can’t believe that it couldn’t happen’

They waited a week into their North Carolina stay before calling a family meeting to break the news.

Seven-year-old Kacie burst into tears. “Why? Why?” she pleaded. Chase, two years older, got mad.

John and Marci tried to explain.

They had found a house in California. With its wide doorways and halls, it was relatively accessible. The big backyard opened onto a nature park. They put in an offer, and it was accepted.

And so, that June of 2007, they had gone to North Carolina to put their dream home on the market.

“That’s not a home,” Kacie insisted. “This is our home!”

As Marci struggled to keep her composure, John told the children they simply couldn’t afford to hold onto the home they’d grown up in. “We’ve had to make some tough decisions,” he said.

They took comfort in having learned over the year just how resilient their kids really were, and knowing that they grasped the difference between Daddy before Project Walk, and Daddy now. He laughed with them again, could pull up to a table and help with their homework.

For Marci, the trip home reinforced the idea that John had to be at Project Walk. In the month they were in North Carolina packing up, he regressed physically and emotionally. He got a urinary tract infection, his first in almost a year. He felt weak.

When they returned to California in mid-July, his demeanor improved almost immediately.

In August, the Project Walk trainers ran John through the exercises for his latest six-month evaluation.

On his first that summer of 2006, he’d scored a four. Then, six months later, a seven.

This time: 10. Yes, it was just three more points on the 0-to-40 scale. But they were happy.

October brought the 2007 Steps to Recovery fundraiser, with the largest crowd yet and all the stars.

Mike Thomas, Project Walk’s first client, awed everyone, walking a half-mile with only a couple of ski poles in hand. Patrick Ivison was walking again, and there were some newcomers, too.

But despite a challenge issued from Patrick the year before, John wasn’t one of them.

He was disappointed, of course, but he had never seen Project Walk as a magic bullet, an escape from the reality of paralysis. He’d come to accept that, and take heart from his improvement in body and soul.

“It makes it all worth what we did to come here,” he said.

When Project Walk founder Ted Dardzinski addressed the crowd, explaining that his center is “not a cure ... not a quick fix” for clients, John nodded.

“But they’re improving,” Dardzinski said, “they’re regaining function.”

'Modest but significant gains'
Project Walk had recently partnered with the University of California, Irvine, to measure any correlation between its therapy and spinal cord injury recovery. Steven Cramer, an associate professor of neurology at the school, had found “modest but significant gains” in examining 30 participants over six months.

“If somebody in the medical profession understands this,” Dardzinski said, “the treatment changes for spinal injuries.

“Everything changes.”

Marci now knew, too, that there was no such thing as a quick fix, though she had honestly believed that after a year at Project Walk, John would be on his feet and they would go home.

“But,” she said, “there is no home in North Carolina because there’s nothing for him there, but to sit and rot away in a chair. And his happiness is my happiness ...”

As the fundraiser drew to a close, she tried to mask her discouragement with optimism.

John, she said, would walk.

“It might take three or four years. But look at this year. Look at where we’ve come. I can’t believe that it couldn’t happen.

“I know it has to happen.”

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