When Angela Malone asked for a hug the other day, her son, Adam, could only say, “Mom, you know I can’t.”

After muscular dystrophy severely weakened his right arm, the 19-year-old didn’t have the strength for a full embrace.

But mother and son recently managed an emotional clinch thanks to a device now available at Methodist Rehabilitation Center’s Assistive Technology Clinic in Flowood.

Known as the Kinova O540, the device attaches to Adam’s power wheelchair and provides dynamic mobile arm support for everything from hugs to mealtime tasks.

When Morgan Trosper shared a selfie on July 9, she didn’t know she was in the midst of a medical crisis.

The Louisville 17-year-old just felt funny and decided to tell her friends. “My body is doing something weird,” she typed. “My fingers, toes and tongue have started going numb.”

Initially, she wasn’t that alarmed. “You know how when your leg goes to sleep? That’s how it felt.”

But over the next several days, a crippling weakness began to progressively paralyze her limbs.

After being hospitalized with COVID-19 for 49 days, Tansy Rawls missed her own bed, her two dogs and food that didn’t come out of a hospital cafeteria.

So she initially resisted a transfer to Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson.

“I did not want to go. I felt like it was time to go home,” said the 55-year-old Jackson resident. “But they convinced me. And it was the best thing, because I couldn’t do anything but stand up, really.”

Michael Jordan of Greenwood was never supposed to make it home for the holidays.

Tethered to a ventilator and unable to walk, the 40-year-old seemed destined to live out his life at Methodist Specialty Care Center in Flowood.

The residential care facility is designed for the severely disabled, and Jordan knew he needed the center’s expertise. Still, he couldn’t imagine a future so far from family.

“I was depressed and I wanted to give up,” he said. “But the big man above wouldn’t let me give up.”

The Research Study

To her long list of medical accomplishments, Jackson ob-gyn Dr. Freda McKissic Bush can now add celebrated research subject.

She recently became the subject of a scientific paper entitled: “Lazarus Effect of High Dose Corticosteroids in a Patient with West Nile Virus Encephalitis: A Coincidence or a Clue?”

Published in “Frontiers of Medicine,” the article is co-authored by neurologists Dr. Art Leis of Methodist Rehabilitation Center and Dr. David Sinclair of Mississippi Baptist Medical Center.

It’s been over seven years since Stevelyn Robinson was paralyzed in a school bus crash, and he hasn’t stopped fighting. He continues to progress through regular physical therapy at Methodist Outpatient Therapy in Ridgeland.

With the help of a walker, the Winona native walked across the stage at his 2016 graduation from Holmes Community College. Now a student at the University of Mississippi, he is working hard so he can do the same again.

Diagnosed with a paralyzing disease she’d never heard of, Dana Kidd’s first instinct was to google the name—Guillain-Barre’ Syndrome.

Only she couldn’t grasp her phone or even tap the touchscreen.

“I had no strength,” said the 48-year-old Meridian resident. “I could only listen to what everybody told me.”

And the news wasn’t good. Doctors said the neurological disorder might leave Kidd unable to walk for nine months or more.