By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

Jim Langevin was paralyzed from the chest down in a gunfire accident as a teenager 30 years ago while working as a police volunteer. For 10 years he has been the only quadriplegic in the U.S. Congress. Before being elected to Congress, he was Rhode Island's secretary of state and also served in the General Assembly. Last week, Langevin was re-elected to another term in the House of Representatives.

Whatever your political leanings, you have to admire the indomitable spirit of a person who despite the horrible disability of quadriplegia rises to serve in Congress.

  Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. Ken and  This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

A quadriplegic since 1995, Paul Boyd has sued the Alabama Medicaid agency in an effort to get home-based care that would enable him to move out of a nursing home where he now lives.

Boyd argues that the agency would save money by letting him live in a house, with some assistance. He wants to live closer to the University of Montevallo campus, where despite his quadriplegia he is a graduate student in community counseling.

For the first 11 years after his paralyzing accident, Boyd living with relatives. Four years ago, when they were no longer able to serve as caregivers, he moved to a nursing home. However, the nursing  home is 13 miles from the university campus.There is no public transportation to get to his evening classes. He uses his scholarship money to pay a maintenance worker from the nursing home to drive his wheelchair-equipped van back and forth to campus.

You have to admire the indomitable spirit of folks like Mr. Boyd who are determined to live productive lives after a devastating injury. I find it extremely fulfilling to help such folks recover the resources necessary to restore as much of a productive life as possible.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. Ken and  This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

Over the years I have been amazed and inspired by the indomitable spirit of clients who are paralyzed by traumatic spinal cord injuries. One client who was a quadriplegic was determined to get back to teaching college and writing books with adaptive technology. A young woman who became paraplegic in an accident finished college, earned her masters degree, taught school, went on church mission trips, moved west,  became Ms. Wheelchair California, experienced adaptive surfing with stars, and rode in the Rose Parade.

Now comes the story of a Canadian quadriplegic farmer, paralyzed from the neck down, so determined to return to productive life that he has designed a tractor that he can operate while seated in his wheelchair.

Some people think that lawyers encourage injured people to lay around as victims. Based on my 33 years of trying cases before juries, I think that is unwise and counterproductive. It is far better to be a courageous survivor, battling the odds to be all that one can be and do all that one can do. There is intrinsic truth in that, aside from any consequences for a liability claim. However, it is also true in litigation, as jurors feel far better about compensating a survivor with an indomitable spirit than rewarding someone who passively accepts victim status.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. Ken and  This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

It's a long way from experiments with lab mice to clinical treatment of humans, and as a Georgia trial attorney in Atlanta, I only represent human spinal cord injury survivors.

However, it is interesting to observe progress in animal experiments that may someday carry over to treatment of humans.

According to an article published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard recently announced they had induced nerve regeneration in mice with severe spinal cord injury.  They deleted an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog), which controls a  molecular pathway that regulates cell growth. PTEN activity is low during development but turns on when growth is completed. Previously, researchers showed they could block PTEN in mice to regenerate nerve connections from the eye to the brain after optic nerve damage. The new research gives some degree of hope that such nerve regeneration could take place in the injured spinal cord.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

The word on the extended family grapevine tonight is that my wife's cousin's daughter, Alex McArthur, a recent Davidson College graduate, has been named Ms. Wheelchair America for the coming year. She has been in a wheelchair three years due to muscular dystrophy.

Last year, one of our clients, Alyson Roth, a spinal cord injury survivor, was Ms. Wheelchair California and a runner up for Ms. Wheelchair America.

Both Alyson and Alex are bright, beautiful and courageous young women.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

If you ever suffer a major injury in metro Atlanta and are still able to talk, remember to say, "take me to Grady."  This is important because treatment at  a Level 1 trauma center significantly improves prospects of successful outcome. A recent article on "The Effects of Trauma Center Care, Admission Volume, and Surgical Volume on Paralysis After Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury" published in Annals of Surgery  concludes that trauma center care is associated with reduced paralysis after traumatic spinal cord injury, perhaps because of greater use of spinal surgery.  Hospitals that do not have trauma centers follow national guidelines to triage patients to trauma centers less than half the time, keeping patients in their facilities when they should be transported to a Level 1 trauma center.

So, as I said earlier, if you are in a serious accident within a 100 miles radius of Atlanta, remember these four words: "take me to Grady."

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers . He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

Spinal cord injury survivors may someday have more hope for functional recovery. An article in Brain by James Fawcett at Cambridge University summarizes research papers reporting functional recovery following a variety of treatments. These have included interventions that affect myelin inhibitory molecules and their receptors, or inhibitory chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans, and treatments in which the regenerative potential of axons has been stimulated through growth-factor receptors or manipulation of internal signalling pathways. The article suggests  it is probable that much of the useful recovery seen following treatment of animals with partial spinal cord lesions is due to the stimulation of plasticity.  However, there is a wide gap between basic research with lab animals and clinically useful treatments.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers . He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

Survivors of spinal cord injury face life-long problems with mobility.  As an attorney representing spinal cord injury survivors, I have often addressed needs for adapted vehicles in life care plans. Now there is news of the first factory-built, wheelchair accessible car – the MV-1 – which is a milestone for the 14 million American adults who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices. We may list this in future life care plans for survivors of catastrophic spinal cord injury who are paraplegic or quadriplegic.

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers . He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .