Big Mick said it.

Because of his courage and determination in the face of what seemed like overwhelming odds, Reeve had made a good measure of progress. A couple decades ago, this would have been next to impossible. Who knows what he might have been able to do had his life not been interrupted by complications from something that is so easy to prevent:   a pressure sore. This is something that people who are confined to bed and/or wheelchair have to be very careful about. They're easy to prevent, but once they take hold, they can be extremely dangerous.

In Reeve's case, he probably wasn't even able to feel it, so it was up to his attendants to have discovered it in time, which obviously they didn't. Not to point fingers, but this is a damned shame. It's worse than a damned shame because it was so preventable.

I've been in a wheelchair since 1990. In 2000, I had to spend about four weeks in a hospital with a leg badly broken from a fall. During that time, my backside (left buttock) became very sore and I complained to both a nurse and my rehabilitation physician about it. They blew me off. Finally, I told another nurse about it, she checked, and hit the ceiling. She called a dermatoligist in right away (and got reprimanded by my rehabilitation physician for going over her head) and the necessary steps were taken before it got started getting real bad. The nurse's first name was Jane, and I never learned her last name. But thank God for people such as her, who listen to patients instead of just treating them like pieces of meat.

Sorry. Didn't mean to go on a rant. But when I heard that what precipitated Reeve's death was an infection from a bed-sore, it brought it all back. Again, a damned shame.

Don Firth