Roosevelt “R.J.” Anderson has dreamed of getting back on his feet for years.
Doctors told him he’d be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
But three years after he was paralyzed from the chest down in a motorcycle accident, the 32-year-old Army veteran is walking again — thanks to a high technology robotic exoskeleton that is offering new hope to a handful of wheelchair users.
“It’s surreal — I’m really truly blessed,” said Anderson, who’s the first person in Chicago to take home a battery-powered ReWalk device that mimics walking.
Anderson can now stand up, sit, and, in theory, walk for up to four hours straight before the device’s two batteries run out.
But the Chicago native is aiming higher.
“We ran a lot in the Army and I love to run, so I’d love to be able to do that again, that’s my goal,” he said, adding that he hopes one day to walk without the device.
Anderson doesn’t know who the anonymous donor is who stumped up the $71,500 to pay for the device, but he said he’d like to shake his hand.
ReWalk’s CEO Larry Jasinski said, “We had a very generous person coming to us and said ‘look I’d like to help a veteran.” The company then called the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where Anderson had been training with exoskeletons for months.
Anderson’s athleticism — he competed at the national Wounded Warrior Games, won a silver medal at the international Invictus Games and has been skydiving since his accident — and veteran status made him a good candidate.
Anderson had already been using the device in rehab for about seven months when he was selected to take one of the devices home.
“I didn’t train with the intention of taking it,” he said. But, he aded “of course it was an easy answer.”
The ReWalk is the only device of its kind approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Anderson is now one of 54 people nationwide to have one at home, Jasinski said. There are about 85 other devices in rehabilitation centers across the country — a number that is expected to grow.
Not everyone is eligible to take the device home. Only patients with some trunk control actually qualify, said Dr. Arjun Jayaraman, a research director at the institute.
“About 70 percent of people screened fail,” he said. “Overhype often causes people to think that all problems are solved and when it doesn’t really do it, it’s hard.”
For the next year, Anderson will use the device during half-hour sessions, three times a week. That should help his doctors determine if the ReWalk helps reduce secondary conditions associated with using a wheelchair.
If it does, researchers will present their results to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the hope that insurance companies will start paying for the devices. The device could prove cheaper than traditional medical care for the secondary conditions, Jayaraman said.
“The primary goal is for the device to be used in everyday life,” Jasinski said. “For someone to take the risk of being the first guy to be walking (with the device) around Chicago, that certainly takes courage.”
But Anderson said, “I’m just looking forward to being able to walk around, go outside and walk, and be back in my normal height.”
