She swings her hips to the left, crunches her left boot down and then swings back again.
But the walk from the end of the run to her chair is the part that’s really hard.
It doesn’t look perfect, exactly, but it is what it is: walking.
That, at least, no one can deny.
Only, Kilgore says she shouldn’t be able to walk.
She says her doctors told her she’d never walk again.
But she couldn’t walk, the one thing that kept her from feeling like her old self.
Then in 2001, Kilgore began to explore the potential of stem cell treatments.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says.
“But it did.
It’s amazing.”
But scientifically speaking, Kilgore proves nothing.
There could be more mundane medical explanations for Kilgore’s recovery, including her incredible athleticism and fitness level.
Her doctor, William Rader, M.D., of Malibu, California, is licensed as a psychiatrist.
What science does know about stem cells is relatively little but extremely promising.
“And we don’t yet have a lot of the answers we need.”
Kilgore couldn’t wait.
She worried that she’d spend most of her life in a wheelchair waiting for a cure.
And she’s not alone.
Kilgore has never been one to give up hope easily.
When she awoke two days later, doctors told her she was a paraplegic.
“No way,” she said.
“I’ll be up and pole vaulting in six months.”
She returned to school the next semester.
Soon, she leaned to monoski, using short poles with ski tips at the end for balance.
She also started driving a car with hand controls and working out at the gym several times a week.
“I really pushed myself,” she recalls.
“I’ve always done that.”
“Everyone had such negative things to say to me,” Kilgore says.
“I felt like they were playing God and determining my destiny.”
“That gave me a purpose.”
Still, her new doctor was operating far off the grid.
Until now, stem cells have had only limited use, mainly in marrow transplants.
Stem cells from living humans are adult cells, already assigned to particular areas of the body.
Opponents of research on embryos claim that adult stem cells are equally useful for studying diseases and cures.
“We’d need to study hundreds to find them.”
And Pera stresses that even Thomson’s discovery “was absolutely dependent on embryonic stem cell research.
We need to have it.”
“Money drives research,” says Youngerman, of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.
“We have the best scientific infrastructure in the world.
But politics is tying the hands of progress.”
On the last day of July in 2001, Kilgore arrived in the Dominican Republic for her first treatment.
Accompanied by her aunt, she wheeled through the Medra clinic with some culture shock.
Kilgore spoke no Spanish; she met few who spoke English.
Kilgore says she noticed a difference almost right away.
As she instinctively swatted it away, the two women stared at each other, amazed.
“The fly was annoying, but I was rejoicing that I could feel it,” Kilgore recalls.
Still, her progress stalled after a few months.
So in June 2002, Kilgore made a second trip to the Dominican Republic.
But she wasn’t in any rush to return to Medra.
But she also grew weary of the politics she’d stumbled upon in an effort to get well.
“They’d say, ‘How can you take a life to save a life?'”
“I’m a Christian, but these people were really angry with me.”
She began to think she didn’t need to walk to be happy.
“Being in a chair has made me a better person,” Kilgore says.
But Kilgore needed to get better to make the point.
For the first time, she could feel the needle going in.
It was excruciating but also thrilling.
“It hurt so bad I was crying on the table,” Kilgore recalls.
“But it meant I could feel again.”
Kilgore seemed to improve exponentially after her third trip to the Dominican Republic.
Her glutes became strong and her bones achy, so she grew fidgety in her wheelchair after long sits.
She felt sore, even muscle-weary, after long days training on the slopes.
For now, though, she says it’s worth it.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen years from now,” she says.
But is it really because of Dr. Rader’s treatments?
And Steward says those who have reason to think they’re improving probably work even harder at therapy.
But she’s OK with that.
“How could I not be if that means I will walk again?”
“It just means I’ll have to start competing as an able-bodied person again.
I’d love it.”
“It’s a time of great promise and hope,” she says.
Rehabilitation therapy has long helped strengthen bones and muscles after injury.
“And in some cases we are doing this with chronic patients many years post-injury.”
VisitClinicalTrials.govfor more news on bona fide studies recruiting candidates.
Photo Credit: Abbey Drucker
