Racing at speeds upwards of 120 mph, nothing holds Michael Johnson back.
Paralyzed from the waist down in a 2005 motorcycle crash, the Vienna Township teen, 16, uses his hands to propel himself around the track in his specially equipped go-kart—winning one state and one national title in races as far away as Quebec and Florida.
This week, the Frankenmuth High School junior is racing toward another goal: He’s flying to Portugal to undergo an experimental stem cell transplant he hopes will repair his spinal cord and enable him to walk again for the first time since he was 12 years old.
“It’s an absolutely huge deal for us. Just about all the people we’ve talked to have gotten at least some feeling back in the lower part of their body or regained bowel and bladder control,” said his dad, Tim Johnson, 50. “He’s told us if he can just get that back, he won’t care if he can’t walk again. He’s still racing and doing the things he really loves. But that one thing would make it so much easier to live his life.”
The Portuguese medical team, headed by Dr. Carlos Lima, a neuropathologist, will harvest stem cells from Michael’s nose and transplant them at the spinal cord break, in hopes they will regrow the lost neural connections.
In 2005, Michael already held 14 national championships and was dreaming of a professional career following in the footsteps of his dad, a former American Motorcyclist Association pro rider.
During a race in Sarnia, Ontario, he was making his move into the lead when he lost control of his 250cc bike and crashed through a railing, barely 20 feet from where his dad stood watching.
“The first thing he said to me was ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ The next words out of his mouth were ‘Don’t make me quit racing.’ He was more worried about that than his injuries,” said Johnson, owner of Universal Coating in Genesee Township.
Next year, he’s moving up into Star Mazda auto racing, the next step toward that goal.
“Racing was my life before, and it still is now. Once you’ve got it in your blood, you’ll never get it out,” Michael said. “I knew I wasn’t going to stop. I just had to find another way to do it.”
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