Disease Can’t Match Drive in Cody Unser’s Mission

She has met Prince Andrew, lobbied President Bush and partied with actor Christopher Reeve.

But what really gets 15-year-old Cody Unser’s adrenaline going these days is getting behind the wheel of a fast car.

“Freedom!” exclaimed the daughter of race car driver Al Unser Jr. “When I get in the driver’s seat, I feel I have total control of everything. It’s a real privilege.”

And another conquest for this atypical teenager.

For three years, Cody has been confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down by transverse myelitis, a rare spinal cord disease that afflicts 34,000 people in the United States. It has turned her into a relentless crusader--for a normal life and a cure.

The high school sophomore got her driving permit this summer. She uses hand controls to drive--one attached to the brakes, another to the accelerator.

“She’s good,” said Albert, her 19-year-old brother and driving mentor. “She took over the (driving school) range course. Parallel parking, driving through cones, she was the lead car.”

“She’s been driving around with her brother and anybody that will let her,” said her mom, Shelley Unser.

Cody also is a certified scuba diver and has vowed to walk again and dance at her high school prom her senior year.

“If anybody can do it, she can,” said Doug Kerr, her doctor and the director of the Transverse Myelitis Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. “Cody is someone who has done extraordinary things in spite of and maybe because of her disability.”

Kerr said Cody’s condition has improved slightly. About a third of the individuals stricken with transverse myelitis fully recover within the first three months.

“She’s in a holding period,” Kerr said. “The level [of paralysis] has decreased slightly. As the level lowers, it gives her a little more trunk support and stability.”

While Cody Unser continues to battle the disease, her father has had his own struggles. The two-time Indianapolis 500 winner was arrested last month after his girlfriend said he hit her in the face while drunk. No charges were filed, but Unser later entered a substance-abuse center to get help for his drinking problem. He finished fifth in the Belterra Casino Indy 300 on Sunday.

Cody and her father have had very little contact since her parents divorced in 1999. She last saw her dad about a year ago and does not plan to contact him about his recent troubles.

“I think it’s going to take more than support for him to straighten his life out,” she said. “I wish him the best and I think it will be good for him to face it by himself.”

Unser said he considers Cody’s battle much tougher than his own.

“Cody is climbing a way bigger mountain than I am,” he said. “She is a way bigger person than I am with far more courage than I have.”

Soon after being stricken, Cody and her mother created the Cody Unser First Step Foundation to increase public awareness about TM. They and Kerr also established a medical consortium to disseminate information about the disease. The consortium, which gathers data from TM patients, now includes several medical groups and institutes nationwide.

Shelley Unser said more than 100 TM patients attended a recent meeting of the consortium in California.

“There was one man there who said he’s had TM for 35 years and had never seen another person with that condition,” she said.

It’s through the First Step Foundation that Cody had a chance to cross paths with Reeve, Bush and other celebrities.

She was part of the welcoming party when Bush visited Albuquerque last year to talk about stem cell research. He has supported giving federal funding for limited embryonic stem cell research.

Reeve, who has been paralyzed since falling from a horse seven years ago, invited Cody to his birthday party last year. She met Prince Andrew when he was at a medical center in California looking into the latest wheelchair technology.

“I got to tell him a little about my story and how much freedom my wheelchair has given me,” she said.

On Sept. 7, rock singer and Showtime comedy series host Chris Isaak will perform a benefit concert in Albuquerque for the foundation as part of the second annual Cody Unser Celebrity Golf Fiesta.

Unser has become a polished speaker as she spreads the word about transverse myelitis. This summer, she spoke to 7,000 insurance professionals at the Prudential company’s national conference in Vancouver.

Unser also is helping teach other paralyzed individuals to scuba dive. Working with the New Mexico Scuba Center in Albuquerque, 10 have learned to dive and are headed to the Cayman Islands this month.

“She has changed people’s lives, opened people’s eyes,” Kerr said. “She’s changed how thousands of people think about transverse myelitis and disability in general.”

Cody has learned to cope with her condition and to appreciate what she is able to do.

“I do get down and depressed every now and then,” she said. Then, repeating one of her favorite speaking tour kickers, she adds, “but in order to understand what’s sweet, you have to taste the sour.”