Level of Injury: C7
ASIA: B
Cause: Diving accident
Age at Onset: 13

Becky Rinehart complains about her son. Not because Noah has Down Syndrome.  Or is paralyzed from the chest down with only partial use of his arms. Becky Rinehart complains about her son because he’s a “TEENAGER. Argggh! Kill me now!”

Becky’s levity must be genetic. On the day of Noah’s diving accident in 2006, he dove into the shallow end of the pool and hit the bottom.  As his swimming coach ripped off his shirt and jumped in, bare belly and all, Noah protested, “Oh no, I don’t want to see that!”

But don’t mistake the Rineharts’ humor for acceptance.  When it comes to fighting for Noah, they are determined. Even before the accident that left Noah paralyzed, his parents made sure their son led a normal life, despite his Down Syndrome. “From the beginning we set high expectations, and he’s always amazed us.” Noah was a competitive swimmer from the time he was eight years old. Popular and outgoing, he was fully integrated into the academic program at his school. (Although, as his mother points out, lunch is his favorite class.) “He’s always just been Noah,” she says. “Even after the accident, he never despaired. He’s never felt sorry for himself, never cried and said I wish I could do this or that.”

Along with a sense of humor, Noah has inherited the perseverance of his parents. He still plays in his high school band, participating in parades and football games. His father has devised an ingenious way of attaching Noah’s paralyzed hands to his trombone so he can join the music of his classmates. His mother wonders, “Is this kid out of his mind? Or maybe he’s got it right and it’s the rest of us that are out of our minds. Noah lives in the present. He just keeps on.”

And Noah keeps on keeping on. Like every teenage boy, he wants a girlfriend. He’s down at the sidelines, playing his trombone during football games. He’s back in the pool, competing with his teammates in swim meets. And his mom is keeping on too, making sure Noah’s body can keep pace with his goals.

“Last year,” she says, “We had all kinds of horrible health issues. We’d get him up in the morning and he’d faint. He was missing school. He had a wound on his backside that took nine months to heal—it was horrid.” Becky took Noah to the spinal chord clinic at Kennedy Krieger in Baltimore where a therapist got him on the RT300 FES cycle. “When they first told us they were going to get him on, we were laughing. I thought, ‘These young therapists are so naive, thinking they can work miracles!’” But it turned out those miracles weren’t so far fetched. “It was truly amazing. He loved it on the RT300. He experienced freedom and he loved it.”

Becky embarked on a battle with her insurance company to secure a home RT300 for Noah. She’s incredibly grateful to the staff at Restorative Therapies for their help. “They know the way through the whole insurance thing. We submitted a claim and they were amazing. They included documents and professional journals about the medical necessity of the cycle.” Eventually the claim was granted. Restorative Therapies' staff showed up to help install it and teach the Rineharts how to use it. There was a problem once, but a Restorative Therapies engineer drove the hour and a half from Baltimore to fix it. And Becky couldn’t be more thankful. Not just for the personal help, but for Noah’s progress.

“He does the bike about three times a week for 45 minutes to an hour. We can see his progress. We can see it on the graphs. And even without the graphs, we can see it in Noah. He can exercise longer. His health problems have lessened. We haven’t had skin issues for a year. At one point we were going to the hospital so often we joked that they should reserve a parking spot for us! They knew our names we were there so much. But it’s been six months since we’ve been. I bet they’ve forgotten us by now.”

“We’re living through all of this grimness and there’s not a whole lot that’s good news. It’s been sooooooo hard, sometimes it seems that there’s nothing but bad stuff. It stinks. It just stinks. But when we went and used the RT300, everyone was so positive and we saw there are good things going on and there can be improvements. And that’s been so wonderful. We’ve dealt with so much. And finally—finally—there are things that aren’t declining. There are things that are actually improving. As a parent, you always wonder if there’s something more you could be doing, something more out there to improve your child’s life. And this cycle, this is it.”

Becky Rinehart, mother of Noah Rinehart