Shepherd Center: Letter From Alana Shepherd

Shepherd Center: Letter From Alana Shepherd: "

Dear Visitor,

You've probably arrived at this page because someone you love is in trouble. A family member. A friend. An important person in your life. An unexpected accident or illness has resulted in a spinal cord injury, a brain injury, or a neurological condition that may change that person's life forever.

The questions and concerns facing you seem overwhelming. What do you do? Where do you go for help? What does the future hold for your loved one?

In this time of crisis, it may be reassuring to know that we've been in your shoes.

In 1973, our son James suffered a spinal cord injury while surfing in Brazil, part of a trip to celebrate his college graduation. His incomplete quadriplegia required immediate medical attention and months of rehabilitation therapy.

James recovered at a hospital in Denver, and today walks with the help of leg braces and a cane. But the fact that James had to leave the Southeast for high-quality specialty care left us frustrated --frustrated enough to galvanize our family and the Atlanta medical community into starting a specialty hospital here in Georgia.

We were committed to bringing high-quality spinal cord injury care close to home, and soon we opened �Shepherd Spinal Center� in a wing of an Atlanta hospital in 1975. We moved into our own facility in 1982, and expanded our space a decade later to 32,000 square feet.

Now, as we celebrate thirty years of growth, our catastrophic care expertise extends to brain injury (which often times coincides with spinal cord injury) and other neurological illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, post-polio syndrome, transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barr� syndrome. In that time, we ha"