Spinal Cord Injury - Andres Pineda

In Andres’s Own Words

“The end result for me was two functioning hands … the surgeries changed my life.”

I was a mountain biker and I got injured in a mountain biking accident in 2008.

I fractured the C5-C7 in my neck and that resulted in paralysis, pretty much from the chest down. I had arm motion but I didn’t have finger motion. And that obviously, is very, very, very tough for day to day activities. I continued on that way until about 2014.

Dr. Justin Brown had visited the Sharp Hospital where there’s a men group that are treated there for spinal cord injuries. They had arranged a presentation by Dr. Brown for people that had spinal cord injuries. He gave a speech on a new type of surgery that he was doing and he was the only one at that time doing this type of surgery. And that was fantastic.

Almost at the same time, my friend used to work as a newscaster for a local television news. Her name was Lynda Martin, and she worked for the CW channel So then I’m not really sure how they linked up with Dr. Brown but the point is when she heard about him and was to interview him, she called me. Being her friend, I showed up. We had a little blurb on TV where we presented his services and the miracle science. And then I went through with the surgeries - it was in several stages.

He had to do tests to see and make sure that there were enough nerves being fired into the arm for them to work his electrical magic and make sure that I could regain some of the hand controls. After the testing there was all kinds of lab stuff. And then he went ahead with the surgery. He did two surgeries per hand or arm. They transferred nerves and they rewired things.

And then miraculously, within days, I could start to see movement and because there were nerves that were rewired, he taught me to flex different bicep muscles to then activate the hand, because he was using different channels to reach them. You are taught to activate different nerves that weren’t there before because we have a memory of lift up your leg and you have a certain sensation but then if it says “twist your back to lift your leg” then it’s a roundabout way but then eventually your mind likes to take shortcuts and then later on you just think about using your hand and then it works. It’s an interesting miracle how you have to think of something differently and then your body eventually rewires it to then do the shortcut version.

So this all happens at different stages - the surgeries are spread out for healing.

One of the things that I’ve always promoted to other people considering the surgery is you’ve got to make sure your diet and your health are the best they can be so then your body has an opportunity to fix things. You have to come in really with a clean diet, and with good knowledge of what your body's going to need through rewiring. These are electrical signals that have to be rewired. Then post-surgery you should be really cautious about stuff because everything has been rewired, carefully and gently. Being cautious leads to a good result.

So the end result for me was two functioning hands. I can’t play the piano, but I can definitely grip. I can brush my teeth, holding a toothbrush, zip down a jacket, open the fridge, uncap bottles and things like that. These seem very mundane in daily life but as a quadriplegic, you don't have that ability, so these things are huge.

I have a manual wheelchair and when you don't have hands you kind of push with your palms and I couldn't ever go out in the rain. You know, I couldn't go anywhere that's wet because you start sliding around. But now I can slow down the chair and control movement in a wheel chair and that gives me safety in the streets. That’s a big one.

So it has been life changing and it was successful twice, which is great, because you can have a 50-50 or less chance of success, but Dr. Brown did great work. He was very, very kind and we had great follow-ups.

The first surgery was just re-transplanting nerves so what he does is borrow from ‘Peter to pay Paul.’ So he ‘borrows’ good nerves to put down and lay tracks down for something else. They have to attach to the muscles and tissue. Then at the second surgery he attaches the ends for one hand. So let's just say that he lays down the wire, and after about 3 months, when it’s strong and then he connects point to point.

If the signal fires on a nerve and it's not well grounded, then you could just rip it out of its full foundation. The tendons and the nerves all have to solidify and then you connect. After Dr. Brown did the grafting on the right arm, I needed a little bit of time to make sure the pain and things had settled down. So then within six months to eight months we finished on the right arm.

Then he did the transplant and then we waited another approximately three months. That rolled into the beginning of the next year. And that then reconnected and that worked great. He not only did the nerve but he also did the tendon transfers.

So part of the surgery involved reconnecting tendons so it would open and close the hand, or the tendons would adjust the positioning of the hands when the nerve activated.

My recommendations are that you have to be healthy and go into surgery in the right frame of mind. You also have to do the rehab, be patient and stay positive to get the best results. I was athletic beforehand so I knew that you can’t just walk your way into a marathon. So it’s a marathon, that's life. And now, in my particular case, it’s two arms.

With any type of injury I think you need to take some time after the injury to figure out what's coming back, what's going to heal by itself. But I would have been more than happy to have had Dr. Justin Brown in my life in the second or third year for sure, rather than to have struggled for 6 years before the surgeries that changed my life.

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