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December 2004

By Chris Wolski

Legacy of a Superman

Heroic. Inspirational. Controversial. Christopher Reeve was all of these things. When he died on October 10, 2004, the former Superman actor, who had been paralyzed in an equestrian accident in 1995, bequeathed a powerful public legacy, helping posthumously to pass a massive stem cell research initiative in California and leaving behind an organization — the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF) — which has vowed to continue its high-profile work as an advocate for spinal cord research.

As glamorous and influential as these legacies are, it is as a rehabilitation patient that Reeve will undoubtedly have his most lasting impact. Defying conventional wisdom and continuing his rehabilitation beyond the typical 6-month period, Reeve saw significant, albeit, limited movement of his extremities and regained sensation throughout his body, proving that continued rehabilitation for neuro-motor injuries is effective, creating a paradigm shift in the rehab community. “[The recovery of feeling below the site of Christopher Reeve’s injury] challenged long-held beliefs by the medical community that recovery of sensation and movement was not possible longer than 6 months after a spinal cord injury. By example, Christopher established that hard work and determination can create real hope,” Kathy Lewis, president and CEO of the CRPF, recently told me.

Lewis makes an important point, and implicit in her observation is what makes Reeve-as-patient more important than Reeve-as-activist. Intubated, breathing via a respirator, lacking bowel or bladder function, Reeve took charge of his continuing recovery—a feat perhaps as astounding as anything he accomplished in his role as Superman. Reeve showed in every benchmark he reached that rehab was not something that is done to a patient with the recipient as a passive doll, but something that is done by the patient. It is the patient, the therapist, the physician working together who can accomplish specific goals.

If there is any paradigm that needs to be busted across the board in medicine is the attitude that treatment is the end, not the means to recovery. Reeve has given rehabilitation medicine a unique opportunity to be the leader in showing the world how a team approach with the patient, therapist, and physician can accomplish miracles.

However, that has not been the focus of the retrospectives of Reeve’s life, which can be attributed to Reeve-the-activist, who sometimes seemed to focus more on the promise of the miraculous—stem cell research in particular—instead of the tough day-to-day work with his therapists and doctors. Stem cell research holds great promise, but its yields are decades away.

Right now, the real treatment promise lies in the daily, unglamorous, and, yes, sometimes frustrating relationship between therapist and patient. It is by strengthening that bond that Reeve did his best and most unheralded work.

Reeve will continue to be remembered - and rightly so - as a man who never gave up. But it is up to the therapists and physicians who cared for and were inspired by Reeve to continue the work he started.

--Chris Wolski

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