Mahdi is a 24-year old male who suffered from a spinal cord injury while driving his rickshaw 4 years ago. After he was discharged from hospital, he spent most of his time bedridden in his family’s village house because he didn’t have a wheelchair, and he couldn’t afford physiotherapy. In December, Mahdi joined 4 other men with spinal cord injurries for a 1-month rehabilitation camp at Samuha. His mother also joined him so she could learn about how to support her son at home. Over the 5-weeks the men participated in yoga classes, exercise therapy sessions, adaptive recreational sports, and guest speakers came in to discuss nutrition, vocational opportunities, cooking classes and other recreational sports. Mahdi was the first one to get long-leg braces (bilateral KAFOs). This created much excitement amongst the patients as Mahdi was able to walk and stand for the first time in 4 years! What a great moment! This helped motivate the others to continue to work hard on their strength and range of motion exercises. Mahdi s mother was so happy because she had seen her son slip into a depressed and hopeless state at home. She noticed that since arriving at Samuha, Mahdi was back to his normal jovial self, excited about his new mobility and starting to think about how he could live his life differently. The collaboration between Mahdi , his family, the community- based rehabilitation workers, workshop technicians, and volunteers (physios & orthotists) helped to improve his physical strength and fine tune his mobility with the KAFOs for independent walking.
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