In their own words....

 

"I was paralyzed in a dirt bike accident on May 17, 2005. I was riding my motorcycle alone on a vacant plot of land down the road from my house when all of a sudden the trail dropped off. It seemed like it took forever to fall and I could see my foot peg sticking up. I was either going to take a foot peg to my chest or go head first into the bottom of my bike. So, I went head first into the bottom of my motorcycle. I landed in freezing cold water up to my chest and laid there for an hour and a half before I was found.

 

I had crushed three disks in my neck and broken two vertebrae, changing his life in an instant. I was told by the doctor that there was very little chance of me getting anything back; and at that point all could do was turn my head, shrug my shoulders and move my arms a little. 

I started exercising at Pushing Boundaries in 2006 and the results have been phenomenal! It has been a lot of hard work but I’ve gone from just being able to sitting in my wheelchair to transferring on my own, standing, balancing and now learning to walk again! I hate to even think of where I would be without Pushing Boundaries and their amazing exercise therapists.

 

The first time the exercise therapists gave me some arm crutches they weren't sure I was quite ready but I wanted to try and I did it. I was just crying, tears of joy just running down my face. The feeling was amazing, accomplishing something he thought might never be possible and proving his doctors wrong.

 

It was a similar feeling the first time I took an unassisted step at the parallel bars. It was a huge step forward and just an amazing feeling! You just have to fight and you can't give up. I’ve said before that there is always a chance and there is always hope. I have clung to that belief and now my dreams of walking are becoming reality."

--S. G.

 

"After suffering a spinal cord injury in a severe motorcycle accident on June 17, 2010, doctors told me there was only a 10 percent chance I would ever regain any meaningful movement in my legs.

 

After many hours of hard work, I walked in for my workout at Pushing Boundaries the day after Thanksgiving with only a cane!

 

I fractured my C6 and C7 neck vertebrae in a motorcycle accident while on a multi-state motorcycle trip in North Carolina. I was back in the United States on vacation. I spent the past five years in Manila, Philippines doing missionary work with my wife Michelle, and our three children Aidan, Jude, and Zephyr, ages 9, 7, and 2. I served as the pastor of Union Church of Manila, an international interdenominational church.

 

As a twelve-year Seattle resident, my family and I returned to Seattle for rehabilitation at Harborview Medical Center. I heard about Pushing Boundaries through Ernie Franz; a mutual family friend and board member at Pushing Boundaries.

 

Pushing Boundaries has been an extremely positive experience for me. The exercise therapists helped me walk again. I went from little movement in a power chair to walking with arm crutches. The Lokomat has been a huge part in retraining my brain and body how to walk. I had to relearn everything. Walking after my accident is so much harder than I ever imagined. It’s not like riding a bike; you have to relearn how to move in a different body.

 

They are their name. Pushing Boundaries really does push you. They gave me the confidence and encouragement to challenge and do what I did not think I could.

 

Pushing Boundaries is a truly supportive community. During a time of incredible trial and testing, when we had lost everything, being with people who were there for us was so good."

--S. R.

 

“Before the accident, I spent a lot of time hanging out with my wife doing various yard work and house projects. It seemed we always had a new project and spent way too much time at Home Depot. In addition to the random weekend projects, my true passion was camping and hiking, especially backpacking all around Washington State. I would spend all winter planning new hiking trips with the guys so we could hit some new trails as soon as the snow melted. Besides that, I love to do anything active; mountain biking, tennis with my brother and especially running with our giant dog, Tyson.

My injury occurred 06/25/2010 at about 2pm. We were getting our first camping trip under our belts and had just unpacked and hit the beach for some fun in the sun. My family and I were at Alta Lake State Park in Eastern Washington. My cousin and I were seeing if we could run and jump from the shoreline and do a shallow dive. He went first and didn’t have a problem.  I dove in and it turns out I didn’t dive shallow enough. I hit the sandy bottom of the lake with my head; felt a sharp pain and then a pop at the same time. I was maybe in 3 to 4 feet of water. I knew right there that I had paralyzed myself. My wife and cousin pulled me to the shore.  I would have never thought I could hurt myself like that, let alone break my neck just messing around but accidents happen I guess.

I heard about Pushing Boundaries at Harborview. I asked my doctor about it and he said it might be a great place for someone like me since I was gaining back so much movement so quickly. About two weeks after I was discharged I went to Pushing Boundaries and had a quick tour. I was initially surprised as to the size and layout of the place, but after my evaluation and first work out with an exercise therapist I was hooked. That night, when my wife returned home from work and saw the energy I was carrying from the ass kicking my exercise therapist handed me, she immediately recognized that Pushing Boundaries was the missing component to my recovery.

When I first started at Pushing Boundaries, I came into the facility in a wheelchair, but after only 8 weeks I was using a cane! I attribute the intense exercise and focused energy from all the therapists to a lot of my recovery. I feel strongly that if I only did PT, I would not be nearly as far as I am today. Pushing Boundaries tested my strengths; they pushed me further than in PT place ever has, and never stopped trying to get me out of my comfort range.

What I like best about Pushing Boundaries is that they really do push your boundaries. I know that sounds cliché, but it's true. I needed a place to continually test my abilities and aim for recovery rather than just adapt and accept the injury.

Today, just 4 1/2 months from being rendered a quadriplegic, I am walking and I can drive without any assistance. I use no assistive devices and I even returned to work as a financial manager November 1st.  Life is good and I'm thankful to the crew at Pushing Boundaries for their hard work.”

--D. E.

 

"I've been doing extreme sports since I was 14 years old. Stuff like skydiving, base jumping, skiing, paragliding and flying airplanes. So at the time of the accident I was 18 years old and of course I thought I was invincible; not only because of my age but just that I had accomplished so many things in such a quick amount of time.

I was living and working in Hawaii as a skydiving instructor for 2 months. Life was great. Having fun and making great money for a kid. After work the staff would always do something new and exciting. Some days it was jumping off of high rise buildings in Honolulu, rock climbing, or scuba diving on the north shore. At that point anything the island had to offer I had pretty much done it.

On August 25th I had my usual work day of making a dozen or so skydives. After work the crew had decided to hike up this 2000ft mountain for some paragliding fun. I decided to hike up with two parachutes for a special stunt. My stunt was going to be: fly away from the mountain with one parachute and when I got enough altitude I would release the parachute and go into a freefall before pulling my secondary parachute. Unfortunately my system failed. My first parachute released too early for me to have enough time for my second parachute to inflate.

People who saw said I fell 100ft onto the mountains and then tumbled down another 50ft unconscious. I had severed my spinal cord, aorta, punctured a lung and kidney and shattered my back.

I was flown to a Hospital in Honolulu where they saved my life. Upon recovering knowing that I should have been dead, I thought about life in a wheelchair for the rest of my life and I knew with the lifestyle I had that it just wouldn't work out.

Friends and family got in contact with Pushing Boundaries where they specialize in getting spinal cord injury people moving again. Progress has been slow, but the fact that I'm working on recovering makes me feel better.

Since coming to Pushing Boundaries I have been working on my balance, standing up, crawling and electro-stim cycling on my legs. I also started walking on the Lokomat. Pushing Boundaries keeps me active and thinking positively. I have the greatest exercise therapists and top of the line equipment. It's just a matter of time before I'm back doing the things I was."

--J. M.

 

"Before my diagnosis I swam competitively in high school. After high school I worked hard and played harder.  I had a water ski boat and was on the water all the time.  Winter was all about snow skiing.  I made at least 12 trips to the mountains a year. 

 

After the initial testing to rule out other disorders that took about 6 months, I was officially diagnosed with Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis the 1st week of January 1994. My original systems were: Blurred vision and loss of feeling in both hands. For the next nine years you would have never known I had MS by just looking at me. I started to use the cane I have now after a huge relapse in March of 2006 that left damage done to my nervous system and the communication to my legs in order to walk.

 

After returning from a stem cell transplant in Athens, Greece on September 22, 2009, I heard about Pushing Boundaries from my doctor.  The doctor highly recommended Pushing Boundaries after my stem cell transplant for rehab. I came to Pushing Boundaries the 1st of October 2009. I walked in and immediately knew it was the place to get me walking again. I haven't missed a day since.

 

After my very thorough initial exam, the exercise therapists quickly became associated with my limitations and instead of working around the problems; they focused on how to fix them. Each day that I walk out, I feel just a little bit closer to my goal of walking without a cane.

 

The therapists at Pushing Boundaries work you out hard. They push you right up to your limits and then keep you there for a few minutes.  I love it when they say, "You can rest when you get home!" It sounds brutal but they know when to push you and they will get the most from you that they can on that particular day.  It works and I've seen the results. Last week I walked 30 steps without the assistance of a cane! I will walk again; it's only a matter of time.

 

Before Pushing Boundaries, sometimes I felt alone in my thoughts that I would walk independently again. Now, I feel like somebody is on my side. The therapists know my goals, see my progress, and work with me every day to see that I'm getting there. It's a nice feeling to leave the place knowing somebody else experienced the same little tiny baby step towards my goal of walking. It confirms that you are not some crazy disabled guy with false hope." 

--T. S.

Visit this page often to see the incredible accomplishments our clients are making that would not be without the support from our community.