By Jamie Rogers
Nicholas Balenger is now a major contributor to rehabilitation research at Mason. Two graduate students work with him twice a week on his rehabilitation. Photo by Alexis Glenn
It’s been two years since a family vacation to Maui took a dangerous turn for George Mason University student Nicholas Balenger.
Balenger, who was then a senior and baseball standout at Lake Braddock Secondary School, misjudged the depth of the ocean where he was swimming and dove head-first into a wave, hitting the ocean floor and fracturing his neck.
Balenger injured his spinal cord near the C4 and C5 vertebrae in the middle of the neck. He underwent surgery at a Hawaiian hospital where he stayed for three weeks before returning to his home in Virginia for treatment at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C.
His hard work and positive attitude have earned him a prestigious Victory Award from MedStar National Rehabilitation Network, which he’ll receive at a gala on Oct. 30, along with fellow honorees Rob McGovern, founder and CEO of Careerbuilder.com; actor Robert David Hall; and journalist Miles O’Brien.
Immediately following the accident, Balenger was left immobile from the chest down. “I don’t think I really fully understood the situation … but I kind of took it in stride… This is what I have to deal with now,” Balenger says.
Over several months, Balenger, now 19, graduated from using a wheelchair to using a walker when Suzanne Groah—a Mason affiliate faculty member and Balenger’s MedStar physician—introduced Balenger to the Mason research team in the Department of Rehabilitation Science. The team has helped guide Balenger further down the path of recovery. This past spring he entered a research project at Mason called the Evaluation of an Activity-based Rehabilitation Program for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury.
Balenger has made great strides since April, when he began working twice a week with Mason PhD students Jared Gollie and Gino Panza under the direction of Andrew Guccione, chair of Mason’s Department of Rehabilitation Science. The graduate students provide the research testing at the Functional Performance Laboratory in the Nguyen Engineering Building and the intervention at the Aquatic and Fitness Center on the Fairfax Campus.
“It was a lot of exercise,” Balenger says. “It was learning to sit and stand and taking your first steps. After the injury, your body is in shock. It doesn’t respond to anything, but then it starts to come back. Therapy is the catalyst that helps you learn to do things again.”
Balenger now uses crutches instead of a walker, and can even walk short distances quite well without aid, Guccione says. He also has gone from living with his parents to living independently on campus, with financial help from his Swim with Mike scholarship, a program that helps physically challenged athletes.
He is the first participant in a Mason research study about college-age people with spinal cord injuries. Guccione says the study is investigating whether individuals with spinal cord injuries continue to improve their physical function after traditional rehabilitation ends.
“And the answer, we believe, is yes they do,” Guccione says.
Balenger is an active contributor to the study because he’s providing feedback on those changes, Guccione says. The Mason research team, which now includes seven doctoral students, is evaluating Balenger’s biomechanical efficiency in movement as well as his muscles’ ability to extract oxygen from the bloodstream and use it.
By working with students like Balenger, they hope to establish a treatment program that will allow those individuals with spinal cord injuries to maintain what they’ve gained and strive for continuous improvement.