My first wheelchair was a steel tank. I’m not being dramatic. It weighed too much, but of course, I adapted and pushed that wheelchair as far and as fast I possibly could. That was thirty-five years ago. I was young enough that I didn’t fully understand what the adults around me meant when they talked about my disability as a “closed door.” I just knew the chair was a bit heavy and the world was not built for me.
A lot has changed since then. The chair I use now is titanium and carbon fiber. It’s so light that after a while, I stopped thinking of it as a piece of equipment and start thinking of it as just part of you. But the bigger shift isn’t about the wheels. It’s about what we now believe is possible.
I competed as a Paralympian. I know what it looks like when human beings push the edges of what a body can do. But what I’m watching happen right now in spinal cord research is a different kind of edge. This past February, I helped kick off Praxis Spinal Cord Institute’s 2nd Annual SCI Innovation Showcase in Vancouver. (I serve as Vice-Chair of Praxis, though I’m writing this as myself, not on their behalf.) It was an invite-only gathering with healthcare leaders, serious investors and entrepreneurs, but the people who mattered most in that room were the ones with lived experience. People who know what it actually costs to navigate a world that wasn’t designed with you in mind.
What struck me about the showcase wasn’t any single breakthrough, though there were several worth talking about. What struck me was the shift in how disability innovation is being framed. For too long, our community has been treated like a charity case with well-meaning fundraisers, modest budgets, solutions built to help a few hundred people at a time. This event felt like something different. It felt like the moment when investors and rehabilitation networks start treating this space the way it deserves to be treated: as a serious, high-priority sector that happens to also be one of the most important frontiers in all of medicine.
And the science backs that up. Researchers at Northwestern University recently published work on what they’re calling “dancing molecules”—a liquid therapy, injected into the body, that forms a microscopic scaffold and signals nerves to regrow. Nerve fibers growing back. Scar tissue shrinking. Results in lab models that would have seemed like science fiction when I was sitting in that steel tank. Add to that the recent FDA clearance for at-home neuro-rehabilitation technology and the first Neuralink trials happening right here in Canada, and you start to get why I use the word “breakthrough” without any hesitation.
Here’s something I’ve come to believe: spinal cord injury research is essentially the Formula One of healthcare. The engineering problems are so complex, the stakes so high, that solving them tends to unlock solutions across the board—stroke recovery, MS, the challenges that come with an aging population. If you can crack SCI, you learn things that help everyone.
But none of that matters if the science just stays in a lab. I’ve spent enough time learning about the intersection of research and real life to know that the gap between a promising study and a product someone can actually use at home is way too big. Bridging that gap, building systems reliable enough and accessible enough to actually reach people—that’s where real work needs to begin and what I usually think about most.
I’ll be honest with you: thirty-five years ago, I was told by doctors, in various ways, to manage my expectations. The door was closed. Adjust. Adapt. Make peace with it.
I don’t believe that anymore. I haven’t for a long time, but now I have the evidence to back me up. I believe we will see a cure for spinal cord injuries in my lifetime, not because I’m an optimist by nature, though I suppose I am, but because the trajectory of this science, combined with a community that is finally being listened to, points in that direction.
The voices of people in chairs are finally guiding the map. That’s new. And if you ask me, that changes everything.
Joel Dembe is a Paralympian, public speaker and a Senior Manager, Go to Market, RBC Direct Investing. He’s also Vice-Chair of Praxis Spinal Cord Institute. He serves as a Chair of the Patron’s Council for the Canadian Abilities Foundation.
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