Hunting for a Miracle, Grasping at a Chance

Part I

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(Photo: AP Images / Denis Poroy)

Marci Pou, right, holds hands with her husband John Pou as they watch other clients trying to walk during an open house at Project Walk in Carlsbad, Calif. Friday, Nov. 10, 2006.

John was skeptical when she showed him the video clips she'd found online.

"They can do a lot these days with cameras," he told his wife.

But with the help of John's mother, Marci persuaded him just to visit this Project Walk place. Marci called and the response was welcoming: Come anytime. A few weeks later, they were on a plane to California.

The center sat in a nondescript business park in Carlsbad, north of San Diego. From the outside, the building could have housed anything, a real estate business or telemarketing call center.

Inside, it was amazing, so different from the outpatient rehab centers John and Marci had tried: A reception area opened into two sprawling rooms filled with workout equipment, some of it specially suited for the disabled — things like a standing frame, which allows a paralyzed person to stand securely to help improve range of motion and circulation, and a gait trainer, a machine that uses ski-like foot plates to simulate walking while the user is strapped into a harness.

There were also Total Gyms. Step climbers. Leg cycles. Equipment that any able-bodied person might use. And trainers were constantly hoisting clients out of their wheelchairs and onto equipment.

The wheelchairs sat empty.

They spoke with a man from Tennessee who was paralyzed playing football. He relocated three years earlier with his parents and had been at Project Walk ever since. He wasn't walking — "yet," he said — but he wasn't about to give up.

They chatted with another man who moved from a nursing home in Montana to Carlsbad with his girlfriend to begin the therapy in 2003. The client, Donny Clark, was paralyzed in an ATV accident, a C5-6 injury like John. Now, four years post-injury, he was taking steps in a walker, with trainers helping to move his legs.

"Are you planning on staying?" Marci asked them.

"We bought a house," said Donny's girlfriend, Kathleen.

When John and Marci met with Ted Dardzinski, one of the founders of Project Walk, he warned them the process would be long — with no guarantees.

"But we're going to do everything we can to help you get better," he said.

Those were the words Marci had been waiting to hear. And seeing had her believing. These clients were for real, she thought. They weren't faking it. There was no trick photography. And it looked like they were having fun. Rock music was blaring. The atmosphere was upbeat. Everyone was smiling.

"This is where we need to be," she thought, "with people like us."

John wasn't entirely sold. He wondered how he was supposed to use all that equipment when his body felt like cement. Maybe his injury was worse than those of the guys they'd seen working out.

Even so, Project Walk seemed to him like a glimmer of light in a world that had gone dark.

The next day, John and Marci went apartment hunting.

When they returned to Iron Station, they sat the kids down at the kitchen table and tried to make it sound like a grand adventure. California was far, true, and they'd be leaving their home, their friends, their family. Chase and Kacie would have to try a new school.

"But this is a place," Marci explained, "that might be able to help Daddy walk again."

A year, the couple had decided. They'd give it a year.

It was the beginning of a journey with no promise of a happy ending, no assurance that John would regain any function, much less walk out the door — like those men on the Web site.

But Marci and John were devout Roman Catholics who had clung to their faith especially tight since the accident.

God created heaven and earth in seven days. Maybe, just maybe, he could give them their miracle in a year.

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TO BE CONTINUED

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