paralized duner

Hello Friends of Dumont Dunes. It always sucks to see those helicopters flying around Dumont on the big weekends. It sucks even more to be on one. Fortunately most of those people walk out of University Medical Center without lasting issues and are set up to ride some day in the future.That's not my story. My family and I have been riding at Dumont dunes for 40 years. Ever since I was three years old. The day after Thanksgiving of 2011, I rode out of camp with my boy for a nice ride in the dunes. About 50 yards out of camp something happened and I went over the bars landing on my head. Broken C3 and C4 vertebrae caused immediate swelling in my spinal cord up to C2 and my heart and lungs stopped immediately. Thanks to the quick action by some young women passing by I got CPR that maintained oxygen in my blood. That went on for 50 minutes until they could stabilize me and put me on the helicopter to go to Vegas.The end result after 10 1/2 months in the hospital, is I am a C2 incomplete quadriplegic. Massive amounts of physical therapy have done wonders for me, more than any of my doctors had ever imagined. But the return in the improvements have now stopped about two and half years after my injury. Now I'm hoping to travel to Panama for stem cell therapy that is not available in United States yet.If you're interested in following my trip to Panama, my future recovery after that and possibly helping out in anyway you can to help fund my trip, please join me at www.mikesscijourney.com. You can add your name to my mailing list and my team of supporters will keep you updated on my recovery and events to help me along my way.Thanks and I'll see you out of Dumont again during the Thanksgiving weekend,Mike Bates