Stéphane Meys walks.
Admittedly, he advances laboriously, leaning on a walker.
Every step requires effort.
But Stéphane walks and it's a great victory for this 46-year-old bank branch manager, paralyzed following a motorcycle accident in 2015. Diagnosed with complete paraplegia, he was a lost cause for his doctors.
It was without counting on a medical trial in China.
With eleven other patients, paraplegics and quadriplegics, French and Chinese, Stéphane participated in an experimental program in Kunming, in the south of the country, between March 2019 and May 2020. It is a French association, Neurogel en Marche, which set up this project with the support of Italian doctors.
Its president, Pierre Rondio, talks about a world first in the treatment of spinal cord injuries.
But caution remains in order.
The association works on the fringes of French research and, despite its results, arouses the skepticism of specialists in France.
However, today, Stéphane is walking again.
Back home, in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, in the North, he confides.
Your life changed on Monday August 31, 2015 ...
STEPHANE MEYS.
A week before, I was still saying to my best friend: “I would win the Loto, I would not be happier.
»I had a job that I liked, my marriage fulfilled me, I had a little girl of 15 months and two boys from a first marriage.
But that day, everything changed.
I was returning by bike from a game of tennis, I took a different path.
It was sunny and I wanted to avoid the highway.
A motorist cut me off.
I got into his door.
What was the diagnosis?
A vertebra fractured and compressed the spinal cord.
I became paraplegic T10, that is to say affected to the 10th thoracic vertebra, and complete.
We say "Asia A".
This is the worst that can happen.
Basically, below the navel, I couldn't feel anything, except for a few areas that were a bit fuzzy.
I never imagined I could get my legs back one day.
However, you kept hope ...
I fought two fights: the daily one to live with my paraplegia, and a second to get back on my feet.
But I remained very lucid: I would never walk as before.
Any progress would be extraordinary.
Every day, I opened my computer, looking for information on new therapies.
In March 2018, I saw that the Neurogel en Marche association was looking for patients for a study in China, followed by rehabilitation in Barcelona.
I did not imagine then going so far, because of the trip, the separation with my family… I had other things in mind: I was to get married in June.
But I still put together a file with the help of my doctors.
Then the association called me and, in October 2018, I went to Barcelona to meet the teams.
There, the Chinese explained to me that, ultimately, the rehabilitation would take place at home.
And you went to China ...
Yes.
I arrived in Kunming on March 11, 2019, in a former military hospital transformed into a clinic.
I was operated on March 21 for five hours.
The night that followed, I felt bad.
In China, caregivers sleep on a small cot at the foot of yours.
They are with you 24 hours a day.
At the slightest noise, they wake up and take care of you.
A few days later, I was much better and I was able to start rehabilitation.
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What did the operation consist of?
The surgeons opened my back where I had the surgery the first time after the accident.
They removed part of the bone to access the spinal cord.
Then they cleaned the area, before placing the fat taken from my abdomen, and previously treated.
This fat is rich in stem cells.
The idea is that this matrix, in the marrow, promotes the regrowth of axons, which are the extension of neurons.
Were you apprehensive about going over the operating table?
My operation, like those of other patients, will remain etched in my mind.
It was unthinkable not to be afraid.
We were at the end of the world, far from our landmarks and our loved ones, and we were told it was a world first.
Even though the Chinese claimed to have mastered the operation, I was not far behind.
I feared pain, and even death.
We had signed a waiver that mentioned these risks.
What were your days like in China?
Each patient had an apartment, not far from the hospital.
At 8 o'clock, I attacked with acupuncture and electrostimulation sessions, followed by physiotherapy.
At 10 o'clock, I would stand up - just stand up - and then walk.
At the beginning, three people surrounded me.
In the end, I made do with only one person who was there for safety, to avoid falls.
After lunch it was floor work with stretches, then again, stand up and walk.
I ended up on a kind of assisted bike.
Given the lack of strength in my legs, it was the machine that did the work.
At 7:30 p.m., maximum 8 p.m., I was in bed, slammed.
And the next day, rebelote.
It all lasted fourteen months.
Did it work?
The first thing I noticed was that my legs were sweating again.
Okay, that's not a big profit, but something had happened!
Most paraplegics do not sweat.
Then the urge to urinate returned.
Paraplegics do not know when to go to the bathroom and test themselves at set times.
Already, to feel that one wants, it is a real comfort of life.
At first, when these feelings returned, I didn't trust myself.
Today, I sometimes manage to do without a probe.
What about walking?
Before the operation, I knew how to stand up with the strength of my arms, but my legs remained bent.
Afterwards, the daily progress was so small that it's hard to tell when the walk returned.
Gradually, I managed to bend and unfold my legs.
Today, I can move one forward, then the other, and move my hips.
“I never imagined being able to get my legs back,” says Stéphane Meys.
LP / Arnaud Dumontier
How does it feel to stand up?
I forgot I was so tall!
And I had trouble locating myself in space.
In China, you also got a tattoo ...
I wanted to keep a memory of this stay.
In particular, we can see, in the drawing, a temple and Japanese cherry blossoms.
I had a maxim added in Chinese, which was visible at the rehabilitation center: “It is not hope that makes you persevere, but perseverance that gives you hope.
"
You stayed fourteen months in China, far from your family ...
At first I was euphoric, I discovered so much that my mind was busy.
This allowed me to avoid moments of spleen.
My wife and daughter visited me every school vacation, and my two boys spent the summer of 2019 by my side.
At Christmas I was there with my family.
But this is the last time they came.
Then, because of the Covid-19, it was impossible to travel.
I no longer had anyone there.
I wanted to go home.
What hopes did you have on this trip?
Committing to such a long project, taking a sabbatical, is not trivial.
I had to have a strong ambition, otherwise I wouldn't have worked properly.
I wanted to walk back with a walker, or even a cane, if a miracle happened.
It seemed to ask a lot ...
Yes, but paraplegia is the poor relation of medicine in terms of research, and there is a lot in neurology that cannot be explained.
So I left telling myself: I'll give everything and we'll see.
Over the months, I realized that it would be difficult for me to walk again with a cane.
But one of the Chinese patients in the study did it by using two!
I even saw him climb stairs.
Before his operation, this boy did not move a toe.
Did you take any exams on your return?
An MRI, in Paris.
We see, at the level of the spinal cord, a lesion of 2.7 cm, whereas we thought it was a little larger.
Has it been reduced or has the previous measurement not been carried out correctly?
Then, we can distinguish, at the level of this lesion, a few fibers which make a bridge between the two healthy parts.
They are fine, but they are there.
Before, we didn't see them.
But the images are not always sharp, you can have an MRI better done than another.
It's hard to compare.
Did all participants achieve such results?
All paraplegics have evolved.
For quadriplegics, it's more complicated.
It is almost not the same pathology, and not the same consequences.
Life is much harder for them.
How much did it cost ?
To me, nothing.
Like the other patients, I recovered some money from my friends by organizing a little party, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the total budget, which amounted to over 800,000 euros.
The Neurogel en Marche association funded this trial with private donations.
Are you not disappointed to always be in a wheelchair?
We can believe in a miracle, but we must remain Cartesian.
All the patients returned in good health and made progress which suggests progress, a path… Science is made up of failures and small successes which lead to big ones.
We can see that something has happened.
I was unable to do what I'm doing today: get up and walk alone with an antebrachial walker
(on which Stéphane rests his forearms, Editor's note)
.
My walk is not very academic, but my legs support my weight.
I rub shoulders with paraplegics who know in what state I went to China.
When they see me, they are in admiration.
I had been in a wheelchair for four years before the operation.
If, tomorrow, this type of test were carried out on patients who had just had an accident, the results could be much more spectacular.
“I continue to rehabilitate at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux hospital every afternoon, and I feel progress,” says Stéphane Meys, who remains in a wheelchair.
LP / Arnaud Dumontier
Are you still making progress?
I continue rehabilitation at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux hospital every afternoon, and I feel progress.
I have less and less difficulty moving my right psoas, a muscle connected to the upper thigh.
There may be a little something reborn in the quadriceps, also in the thigh.
To confirm.
You don't get anything without work.
What is your goal now?
I am having a more spacious house built for me, adapted to my situation.
I want to be able to move around freely in a walker, and to remain standing when I receive friends, for a drink, for example.
