Hey Ken: Do you know where can I download First Steps (1985) TV movie) for free pls?
I am asking this question because this movie gives me a lot of strength and courage knowing that I’m physically disabled in a wheelchair. I would appreciate it very much, if there will be someone that would give me the direct link of where can I download the complete mentioned movie pls, thank you very much in advance.
”I won’t ever forget just before the wreck. My boy friend was leaning over to put another tape in the tape deck. I thought, ‘Boy, we’re not going to make that curve,”’ Ms. Davis said. ”I hope that the movie doesn’t upset him.”
The film ”First Steps” chronicles the events leading up to the day in 1982 when she made history as the first person with paralyzed limbs to walk at will.
It was an achievement accomplished through a computer system developed by Wright State University Professor Jerrold Petrofsky, a bio-engineer.
Ms. Davis saw ”First Steps” in advance of its telecast, scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight.
Rigged up to a device that stimulated the damaged nerves in her legs, Ms. Davis managed several jerky, halting steps that were later shown on the CBS-TV program ”60 Minutes,” and displayed in newspaper photos around the world.
The technique still is experimental, but it eventually could restore partial mobility to the 500,000 to 2 million Americans confined to wheelchairs.
For Nan Davis, the most difficult scene to watch in the CBS television movie of her life is the re-enactment of the car accident that left her paralyzed.
It happened on the night of her graduation from St. Marys High School as she and a friend were returning from a party.
The small foreign car ran off a curve, flipping over several times. Her friend, who was driving, escaped with minor injuries.
”I won’t ever forget just before the wreck. He was leaning over to put another tape in the tape deck. I thought, ‘Boy, we’re not going to make that curve,”’ Ms. Davis said. ”I hope that the movie doesn’t upset him.”
In this case, Davis, now 25, was paralyzed from the ribs down after a car crash on her high school graduation night in 1978. She was a passenger in a Volkswagen that rolled over. She was not wearing a seat belt. Driven by a desire to walk again, she started using a computer system that fires electrons to make leg muscles move and gets feedback from knees, hips and ankles to coordinate movement.
The device was developed by Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, a biomedical engineer who first experimented with electrodes to stimulate paralyzed leg muscles at St. Louis University. In mid-1981 he moved to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
Ask Nan Davis about her first encounter with Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky, and the answer comes so quickly and easily it’s like asking what date Christmas falls on..“It was June 7, 1982,” she said. “I met him in Minnesota at a spinal cord injury convention. I wasn’t going to bug him about getting into his program. But I went up to talk to him about it and he said, ‘If you’re interested, give my assistant a call.’.
Four days later Nan Davis was in the program. And, with Petrofsky, she found herself on the cutting edge of research offering the hope of improved lives to victims of spinal cord injuries. Not a quick cure, but hope.
.
Their story — two stories, really — came to television in “First Steps” on CBS.
His is the story of a research bio- engineer working on computer-driven devices to stimulate paralyzed leg muscles of paraplegics.
Hers is the story of a woman who was a passenger in a car that left the road on the night of her high school graduation in 1978. The accident left her paralyzed and sent her through a cycle of emotions that ranged from depression to bitterness.
His most visible success came in 1983. The scene was covered in real life by “60 Minutes.“ As re-created at Chicago`s North Park College and played by Amy Steel and Judd Hirsch, it is a very emotional moment.
But two weeks ago Nan again took a few tentative steps, at her graduation from Ohio’s Wright State University. She did it with the help of two strong helpers at her elbows and a purse-size computer that fed precisely timed impulses to 24 electrodes taped to her legs. The firing of the electrodes caused muscles to contract, and she was able to place one foot jerkily in front of the other.
One by one, cap-and-gowned students collect diplomas to the cheers of 1,500 proud parents and relatives. The gymnasium hushes. “We have saved one graduate for last,“ says the dean. “Nan Davis is now going to walk to receive her diploma.“ From bleachers and gym floor come deafening applause. A smiling young woman is helped to her feet from her wheelchair. She takes 10 faltering steps with her doctor and an aide holding her arms.
Nan began working with Petrofsky, who had done earlier work with muscle stimulation in animals, a year ago. Their first achievement was to stimulate her legs electronically to lift weights, thus strengthening her atrophied muscles. Last November, with her weight partially supported by a parachute harness suspended from the ceiling, Nan took her first electronic step. Petrofsky’s next goal was to program his new miniature computerized stimulator so Nan could walk with canes. The big problem is still balance: The computer has a hard time calculating the position of Nan’s body. Says Petrofsky, “When you are working with canes or free-walking, you can’t afford any errors. One mistake, a broken leg.”
In addition to improving Nan’s muscle tone and offering the tantalizing promise of increased mobility, electronic stimulation has also made her something of a celebrity.
She has spoken at medical conventions from Las Vegas to Toronto, and in April she appeared before a House committee on funding biomedical research. Soon she will audition to play herself in a CBS-TV docudrama on Petrofsky’s life.
The next step for Petrofsky, an inveterate tinkerer who met his wife, Cheryl, 36, through a computer dating service, is broader experimentation. Some critics have suggested that problems of balance and control will be insurmountable. Also, Petrofsky’s devices cannot help those who have been crippled so long that their muscles cannot be built up again.
But Petrofsky sees the field as eminently worthy of exploration. He hopes eventually to transfer his program onto a computer chip that could be implanted in a patient’s lower torso and controlled by the patient’s back and chest muscles. “I think it would be criminal to sit here with all the technology that has come out of the space program and not try to apply it,” says Petrofsky. “All that’s missing is the experiments that hook up the technology to the human body.”
Nan Davis is helping to bridge that gap. “Adjusting to my injuries was hard at first,” says Nan, a former high school sprinter. “But I was an athlete, and I have the quality of being competitive, and that helps in the fight to over come my injury.” She pauses to reflect. “You can live with your injury if you have to. But there’s no reason you have to accept it.”
