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Alex Cabrero ReportingChances are you watch TV with a remote in hand. Gone are the days when you actually had to get up and walk to change the channel, but one Salt Lake City man would give anything to be able to do that again. A new machine is getting him on the right path.
Walking is something you take for granted, until you're not able to do it. Just ask Michael Pehrson about his life-changing motorcycle accident.
The last time Michael Pehrson learned to walk, he was one. Now, 49 years later, he has to learn it all over again.
Michael Pehrson: "I never had one, an injury at all. I've been driving since I was 14."
Six months ago he was on his motorcycle when it all went terribly wrong. The next thing he remembers is his hospital room and not being able to move his entire right side.
Michael Pehrson: "I woke up out of the coma and I said no, no."
Michael says doctors told him he might not ever walk again, the kind of crushing statement physical therapist Wade Greenwood loves to prove wrong.
Wade Greenwood, Physical Therapist: "Anything that helps my patients get back moving again is really neat to me."
In that case, the Auto-Ambulator is pretty neat. It's a weird sounding name for an amazing piece of machinery. Using a harness, patients are slowly placed on a treadmill while the machine's robotic arms simulate walking.
In time, patients can have the harness lowered, placing more of their own body weight on the treadmill, rebuilding the muscles needed to walk.
Dr. Joseph Vickroy, HealthSouth Medical Director: "It's able to adjust itself in a very custom way to the needs of the specific patient."
For Michael, that means going from not being able to walk to getting along just fine.
Michael Pehrson: "Oh man, it helped me so much, helped me big time."
The machine certainly isn't a cure, but doctors say it can help with all sorts of walking problems caused from strokes, brain injuries, multiple sclerosis, even spinal cord injuries.
