Father Opens Neurological Recovery Center To Help Son Walk Again

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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - At 20, Spencer Conti is a different person than he was at 19. He's obsessed with sports now. Portuguese is coming along as a favored second language and he's learning to walk again.

The last one is still a struggle. Whenever his therapists are ready though, they can fit him into a harness. They strap his legs into metal, carbon and plastic braces, and a treadmill starts to roll. Robotics move his legs and feet, in a normal gait. Twenty months ago, he couldn't move a muscle.

He can do all that work whenever he wants. After all, the Neurological Recovery Center where he rehabilitates at in Fort Worth, was opened for him.

Inside an old Target store off I-30, is the Lokomat machine Conti works on. There's a robotic machine for arm therapy, a table to help patients spend time upright, and some of the more traditional therapy tools. It's all there for Conti, but it turns out, he's not the only one using it.

His parent's decisions to help him, have expanded into an opportunity to help anyone working to overcome a setback. Bruce Conti didn't even know if his son would be able to use anything he bought, or if it would even work. He was ready to do anything though.

"Yeah, you tend to get that way," he said.

Around Thanksgiving in 2013, Lee Anne Conti woke Spencer up for a dentist appointment. He was home from his freshman year at the University of Alabama. He wouldn't wake up.

Bruce Conti said doctors still aren't sure exactly what happened. There was an infection though. His organs failed, his brain didn't have oxygen. He was on a ventilator more than three weeks.

"His eyes opened and that was about the only movement we saw," Bruce said. "There wasn't any, as far as being responsive and making sound, there wasn't any of that."

A few weeks later his college buddies were able to make him laugh. It was a big day when he ate half a Cheez-It. The family lived in Houston for a few months while Spencer tried to recover.

"We were told by the neurologist back then, stimulus and therapies are, that's what's going to make him or break him."

The Lokomat stood out to Conti as a stimulus that Spencer had to try. The $400,000 machine replicates the walking pattern in a perfect motion. The idea is to retrain the brain to do the work it used to know how to do. Physical therapist Jennifer Zoll said it does the work three of four people would usually struggle to do.

"For instance with Spencer he's 6 foot tall," she said. "I'm five foot five. I can't manage his upper body and his lower body, hold his head up, bring his leg forward. It's exhausting. After three steps, I'm wiped, he's wiped."

Conti, a commercial real estate developer, couldn't put a Lokomat at the house, where Zoll was doing work part-time with Spencer. It's government regulated. It had to be at a rehab center. So he opened one.

"This has kind of been a therapists dream," said Zoll, who now runs the center full time. "Most therapists don't have access to this kind of equipment."

It wasn't immediate success with Spencer, but over the past two months, he's gone longer, and longer on the machine. And Conti decided, it was worth a try, for maybe a couple of others.

He started with Parkinson's patients. Murray Zoota was one of them. The 70-year-old struggles to move his heels and toes. After a couple months on the Lokomat he said, he's moving better.

Men with spinal cord injuries are coming in, children, patients with brain injuries. The center hasn't been able to accept insurance yet. So some are paying out of their pocket. Some aren't paying at all. When asked if it would be a money making venture at all, Conti responded "It probably won't be, no."

He's hoping to recover 70 percent of his costs, mostly for labor. He needs to hire more therapists already. He's building an aquatic center across the parking lot.

Conti said doctors still don't know exactly what happened to his son. Because of it though, others who never had the option the help being offered, now do.

"I have a feeling once our name and what we have gets out there, it's going to be a game changer," Zoll said.

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