Community Rallying Around Granby Memorial High School Graduate

Recently, a young man from Granby had a terrible accident, and now the community is rallying around him and his family.

On May 7, Jared Grier, a member of the Granby Memorial High School Class of 2014, fell from a tree and as a result of the accident is paralyzed below his chest and will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His entire nervous system was affected because the broken C6 vertebrae impinged his spinal cord.

He fractured his C6 and compressed his spinal cord to about 90 percent at the moment of the impact of hitting the ground and is considered a “complete quadriplegic.” The damage to the spinal cord is at a microscopic level and presently, medical experts are unable to make repairs at that level.

Grier has no feeling below his nipple line. He doesn’t feel his legs, feet, or toes. He can feel his thumb and index finger but feeling diminishes as you go down the finger line to the pinky. He can’t grip anything, but he can pull small things, like a straw, toward him with a clenched hand. He has wrist flexion, but no ability to control his fingers - they remain motionless. He can scratch his nose with the side of his hand, but can’t apply pressure to anything with his fingers. He has no trunk strength or control, his voice is not as strong as it used to be, and he can’t functionally cough.

Recently though, he was able to eat independently and throw a ball in the gym to loosen up his arms and shoulders. He has been doing physical therapy and occupational therapy each day and the therapists are showing Grier and his family ways to improve strength and range of motion, and ways for accomplishing things with the limitations he currently has.

They have also been letting him know that the more he does, and the better he gets, the greater his recovery will be.

He is also having severe increased sensitivity to sound and vibration. Different noises bother him in different ways and loud noises can’t be tolerated right now. He also struggles with temperature regulation and at 6’2” is down to 119.5 pounds.

Despite all this, he has been handling it with grace and is still himself - patient, calm, kind, respectful, and always concerned about how others are doing.

The accident happened while Grier was visiting friends at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he had just finished his freshman year as a mechanical engineering major, so he was taken to UMass Memorial in Worcester first. He has since moved to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta for rehab.

Recently, Grier was selected to be involved in a research study involving the implantation of human embryonic stem cells into his C6 spinal cord. He is the first person in the country to participate in this study. He had the surgery and became the first person to receive stem cells into a spinal cord injury in the cervical area of the spinal cord. There have been five patients in the past that received this type of treatment to the thoracic area of the spinal cord.

The study requires a big commitment on Grier’s part. He will be required to be followed by the study for the next 15 years, and will go back to the Shepherd Center often for testing and updates.

There is no guarantee that Grier will get any benefit from this, but he feels strongly about being in the forefront of spinal cord injury research, and he wants to do whatever he can to help researchers learn about different procedures that could potentially help patients.

His family hopes this might give him some benefit, but they are cautiously optimistic. The hope is that he will see some improved functionality above what he would have without the procedure.

Friends and supporters have put together a fundraising page to help Grier and his family with expenses that have been, and will be, incurred throughout his recovery.

To learn more about Grier and his journey, check out http://grierstrong.com. For fundraiser information, click here.

Photo courtesy of the Grier family.