Eleven-year-old Lexie Bolds was having fun visiting a friend in Jasper, Texas, when she was involved in an accident that left her with a broken neck and arm. She injured vertebrae C2-C4 and injured her spinal cord at C4.
Rushed to Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center by Life Flight® helicopter, Lexie had surgery to fuse the bones in her neck together. She spent the next three weeks in the Pediatric ICU at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital.
Completely paralyzed from the neck down, Lexie was transferred to TIRR Memorial Hermann in May. Over the following six weeks, under the medical direction of Juan LaTorre, MD, Lexie learned how to sit up, stand up, walk and feed herself – basically learning how to do everything all over again.
A month after being released as an inpatient, Lexie came back for another six weeks of Rehabilitation at TIRR to improve the control of her hands and fine motor skills, including buttoning her clothes, tying her shoe laces and putting in and removing her contact lenses.
Lexie is back on her soccer team, enjoying the sport she once played competitively. Her left arm and hand are not completely recovered, but are now very functional and getting stronger each day with the therapy skills she learned at TIRR.
Lexie began the eighth grade in the fall of 2008. An honor roll student, she plans to work towards her goal of becoming a neurosurgeon.