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Finally, a good disability PSA

Mar 16 07:10

When I watch my shows on my amaaaazing DVR machine (my favorite gadget in the house) the probability of me pausing to watch a commercial is rare. And the sad thing is - I actually miss out on a lot of really good, well-made commercials, and even sometimes on socially important commercials. Thank God for the internet otherwise I might’ve missed out on this damn good PSA made by The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

This thirty second PSA stars Rob Summer, the well-known college baseball pitcher who played at Oregon State who was paralyzed in a car accident in 2006, becoming a C7 quad. The PSA begins with a model of the human body and it’s filled in with dominos. They begin to fall over from the chest down, then continue falling all the way down to his feet. This is a great visual to show people who know nothing about spinal cord injuries what a C6 injury really means.

After the dominos fall, they are put in reverse, and then Rob is showing standing up using breakthrough experimental epidural electronic stimulation in his legs, with an overdubbed voice saying, “What if it was possible to reverse the affects of spinal cord injury.“ Effective? Yes. Then of course the voice tells people to consider donating to The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. The PSA’s aim is clear: To get people excited about the possibility of a cure for spinal cord injuries. And I am loving it.

I’ve seen PSAs telling kids to not fall stupidly or to not to drive drunk so they don’t end up like me (those always make me cringe), but this….this is a refreshing change. If you’re injured. whether you agree or disagree with some of the methods used in spinal cord injury research and funded by the Reeve Foundation, you gotta love that a national PSA is going to be put out there that shows our situation in a vein of hope, of futuristic possibilities, not one of doom and gloom and only using our peers a warning sign to others.

Watch the 30 second PSA on the Reeve Foundation’s site

- Read more about Rob’s injury

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By Tiffiny Carlson

Tiffiny Carlson Disability buzz, travel, fashion and dating — fun things to amp up everyday wheeling life.

Tiffiny Carlson is freelance writer and writes the “SCI Life” column for New Mobility. She's also a C6 quad from a diving accident that occurred when she was 14 years old. A lifelong resident of Minneapolis, Tiffiny has been a writer in the disability community for over 10 years and writes for several publications and blogs, as well as her personal blog BeautyAbility. Her work has also appeared in mainstream publications such as Nerve.com and Playgirl.