OLATHE, Kan. — A metro woman went to Arizona for brain surgery, and received some help in her recovery from a wearable robot or exoskeleton.
“It’s very nice to have freedom,” said Heather Sixta, who is back home in Olathe. She was walking outdoors with a cane and some assistance from her son.
Sixta first lost some use of her left side after brain surgery four years ago for a cluster of vessels that bled and threatened her life. Recently, another cluster started bleeding, leading her to Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix for surgery.
She said that after the surgery, “I had completely lost my left side again. I was worried and a little angry because I had come so far and then to lose it all again.”
Sixta would get some extraordinary help in rehab from the exoskeleton. It’s a $200,000 wearable robot. Battery-powered motors moved her legs and helped retrain her brain so she could again take steps on her own.
“It just starts to help you get in the right rhythm of how to walk and how to bend your knees and where your feet have to go,” said Sixta.
Dr. Christine Kwasnica of Barrow Neurological Institute said, “She’s just made amazing progress and from somebody who wasn’t able to get out of bed and move by herself to now being able to bear weight and move by herself. ”
Sixta added, “I’m gonna be 100 percent real soon and I wish I could be using that exoskeleton right now.”
No rehab facility in the metro has one yet. But the single mom is just glad to be home with her kids and, she says, on a faster road to recovery because of a bionic suit.
The exoskeleton can even allow people with total leg paralysis to walk. But aside from the high cost, the question is whether those people will want to wear the big suit on a regular basis.
