Chapters Transcript Video Rewired From Head to Toe Riley Mulholland is a lacrosse player and all around athlete. He was looking forward to junior year in high school when he blew out his knee, play, wrestling with friends, everything you can possibly imagine that lives inside the knee, he tore off and he was left with coronial nerve damage and he had basically a paralyzed leg. As soon as I met with the orthopedic surgeon, I found out that my athletic career would be pretty short lived after this and it's gonna be really hard to recover from a nerve or foot drop injury, dorsiflex as much as you can. Yeah. And on the right side you're trying, ok, Riley couldn't move his foot even after surgery, fixed his knee. But doctors told him to wait and see if the peroneal nerve reawakened. Then the family met Cedar Sinai. Doctor Mitch Saroya. Unfortunately, so many patients are told to just give nerve injuries time. And what they don't realize is that there is actually an expiration date or a time clock, meaning that by 12 to 18 months, these nerve injuries become irreversible. Doctor Saroya pioneered nerve replacement surgery and Riley got to him in the nick of time 11 months after his accident, although the foot couldn't move, the muscle could still receive electricity, allowing Doctor Saroya to perform his surgery, taking nerves from the big toe and rerouting them to the front of the leg. We then went to the inner calf area to find his toe. Electricity. We identify it, isolate it. Take a nerve stimulator, test it to make sure the toes are bending strongly. We then divide that electricity and shoot it from the inner calf area out to the front of the leg, still connected to the spine. So it's still a working wire of electricity. And now we then cut the nerves going into those muscles and connect it with that to electricity. Nerve. Six months after surgery, Riley was finally able to lift up his foot. The first step on the road to recovery. Dorothy flex your feet and um, and do it again. Then came months of physical therapy. And this is Riley today on the college lacrosse field. My senior year I performed very well in lacrosse and then got to play here at San Diego State. This was my comeback kid, what he was able to overcome how he overcame. And with the help of Doctor Surya, really giving him this fortitude and this this possibility to regain motion, regain the ability to walk normally again, regain the ability to play on the field and to absolutely shine. Like the most incredible start Created by
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