In 2021, Stacye Westington tripped over a rug, and as she lay on the floor in her Kingston home, she became aware that a glass she had been holding was broken. A shard was cutting her arm. It hurt.

Then, moments later, her arm didn’t hurt anymore. As the pain died away, so did all of the feeling in her arm. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything below her clavicle. The long-time trauma nurse recognized signs of paralysis.

“It was so scary. I was going in and out of consciousness,” said Westington, who at the time was 57 and enjoying an active life.

“I skied. I did yoga. I played pickleball,” she recalled in a telephone interview. “I loved to go snorkeling, and we had just gotten home from a trip to Mexico.”

Westington would later learn the fall had broken several bones in her neck. A neur

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