David Weldon: “I rose a short while ago, spoke for 1 minute about a brave young lady. She was in my office just yesterday, along with…”

“I rose a short while ago, spoke for 1 minute about a brave young lady. She was in my office just yesterday, along with another brave young lady. This is Susan Fajt, and she was accompanied by Laura Dominguez. Both had suffered spinal cord injuries. Both ladies were injured in a car wreck. Laura's injury was in the neck, and this young lady's injury was in what we call T-6. It is the thoracic spine which is sort of the upper part of the chest, middle of the chest area. I practiced medicine for 15 years before I was elected to the House. I still see patients once a month. I used to take care of a lot of spinal cord injuries, and in the past it has been very hard and very difficult because there really was not very much that you could do. What both of these ladies had done, this is a new treatment, a new intervention; and it is not approved to be done in the United States. The place where it is currently being done is in Portugal by a Dr. Carlos Lima.”