SPOTLIGHT VICTORY WALK INC. Agency improves skills of spinal-cord impaired

— For those with spinalcord injuries, progress isn’t measured in steps, but in independence.

A January 2007 work injury left Greg Lemke a quadriplegic. Lemke has worked hard in the years since, and while he hasn’t yet achieved his goal of walking again, he is able to drive a car.

It’s an enormous accomplishment, one that has lessened his reliance on others.

“He is getting stronger, and learning to be more independent, and that comes through the strengthening of his body,” says Greg’s mother, Lynda Lemke. “We’re very proud of the progress he has made. ... [Now] Mom and Dad don’t have to take him every place.”

That sort of victory is made possible at Victory Walk Inc. (1200 N. 40th St.), a spinal-cord injury therapy center. The Lemke family opened the facility in April 2009,when it had only one client.

Today it has 10 clients, who come from as far away as Jonesboro.

“We’re very proud of that number,” says Lynda, who is Victory Walk’s president. (Her husband, Al, is on its board.) “Once they come here, they normally come back, because from the very beginning, they feel something different in their bodies. They feel like there is hope.”

After Greg’s injury, he spent 16 days in a Temple, Texas, hospital, followed by four months at a rehabilitation facility in Craig, Colo. He returned to Northwest Arkansas in May 2007, and began looking for ways to regain control of his body.

Greg received stem-cell implants during a 2008 trip to China, and saw immediate results, improving his strength and mobility. Later that year, he spent two weeks in Texas with Pressing On, an organization that Victory Walk is modeled after.

Lynda Lemke calls it an “intensive, activity-based exercise program.”

“We are very adamant about the fact that there is recovery,” she says. “Whether it’s a big toe or walking, anything is a recovery.”

Victory Walk doesn’t have a physical therapist on staff. Instead it employs a trainer, Greg Alderson.

Alderson was sent to California’s famed Project Walk, where he learned the Dardzinski Method. Employed at Victory Walk, the method is a five-phase recovery plan that teaches the brain and muscles to function together again.

Those who come to Victory Walk are given an evaluation, where a customized therapy plan is formed. Then the hard work begins.

Greg, a computer operator in Lincoln, is at the center three times a week, for three hours a session. The center has several different machines that help strengthen bodies.

“When you become a spinal-cord injury person, there is not anything you cannot do; you learn to do it in a different way,” Lemke says. “We don’t baby them. They’re here for one reason, and that’s to work hard.”

A nonprofit organization, Victory Walk charges $50 an hour, although Lemke says it costs $68 an hour per client to keep the center open. Insurance doesn’t cover therapieslike those performed at the center, so it relies heavily on grants and donations; it also had a successful golf tournament earlier this year.

The Lemkes have worked to make the center accessible for families as well. Lynda is always there to talk with family members and caregivers, and often has simply picked up the phone and checked to see how they were coping.

“We want to be here for support, for the families, as well as the person who’s here for therapy,” Lynda says. “By knowing that we are moms and dads of [children with] spinal-cord injuries, they feel comfortable [to talk]. It takes a lot of patience, a lot of understanding on both sides, and you have to rely on God. You don’t get through this yourself.” For more information about Victory Walk Inc., call (479) 365-2000 or visit

victorywalkinc.com

Northwest Profile, Pages 39 on 10/31/2010

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