Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals

Donations help patient return to college and enjoy leisure activities

December 13, 2016

Myles Hibler plays for his favorite team again from Madonna Rehabilitation Hospitals on Vimeo.

 

LINCOLN, Neb. (MADONNA)--Myles Hibler and his twin brother, Michael, always enjoyed the friendly competition of an NFL football game on the Xbox. After a paralyzing rollover accident last summer, Myles lost the ability to move his arms and legs.

During his rehabilitation, Myles’ therapists instructed him on ways to use the quad-stick to also control a computer mouse to communicate with friends through social media and email. The quad-stick will allow Myles to return to college classes as well as engage in leisure activities. This purchase would not be possible without donor support of the First Hope Equipment Fund which was initiated in 2012 with a gift from Cabela’s CLUB.

Thanks to donations to the Madonna Foundation’s Spinal Cord Injury Fund, Madonna purchased a $700 mouth-operated game controller that uses a quad-stick and sip-and-puff sensors to allow a gamer with quadriplegia to play on a regular game system with family and friends. Therapists also accessed funds through the Madonna Foundation’s First Hope Patient Equipment Fund to purchase a mouth-operated system for Myles to take home after discharge.

Therapists also approached Dr. Chase Pfeifer, assistant research director of Rehabilitation Engineering in the Madonna Research Institute, to help them come up with a solution to sanitizing the mouth piece between uses.

To remedy the situation, Dr. Pfeifer created multiple inexpensive mouth pieces for the system that can be easily sanitized. Dr. Pfeifer and his team reverse-engineered the mouth piece using Madonna’s on-site 3-D printer. Patients using the system have their own plastic bag with the 3-D-printed mouth piece and tubing. This equipment can easily be cleaned between uses and only costs about $4 each.  The 3-D printer was made possible by a generous gift from the Goldwin Foundation in 2015.