All Mark Pollock Blogs
Why weight loss isn’t about willpower
On the morning of the Commonwealth Games Rowing Championships in 2002, I stood on the scales in a paper-thin Lycra vest and shorts. The screen flashed up 68.8 kgs (10 stone 12 pounds), comfortably below the 70 kgs (11 stone) upper limit for the lightweight category...
read moreExoskeleton Access Programme
We launched an Exoskeleton Access Programme at Dublin City University. This programme to provide universal access to Ekso Bionics robotic legs for paralysed people, stroke patients, those with MS and other neurological conditions for a nominal fee.
read moreWhat is normal?
I can’t step onto a weighing scales at home anymore. Instead, I travel to the National Rehabilitation Hospital and roll onto a weighbridge in my wheelchair. Like an HGV driver being inspected at customs, I am pausing temporarily on my way to another place. My...
read moreMy first piece of kit post-fall: the table my dad made
I had an unexpected rush of emotion this morning as I rolled into my kit room in Trinity College Dublin. Simone, my fiancée, hadn’t been in here for a while, and she said, “Oh, look! Your red table. I’d forgotten about your red table.” “Imagine,” she said, “There are...
read more8 years on from intensive care
Yesterday, 8 years ago, I fell from a second storey bedroom window onto the concrete below. I’m not sure how it happened, but I suspect I got up to go to the bathroom and, being blind, using my hand to feel my way, that night, my hand found an open space where the...
read moreWhen humans and technology collide
Mark Pollock and Jonjo Bright discuss the experience of walking in Ekso Bionics robotic legs.
read moreA 50 Subject Spinal Excitability Study
We completed a spinal cord excitability study in a group of 25 healthy subjects and 25 paralysed subjects in Trinity College Dublin to gather baseline data to feed into more complex research studies with multiple technologies.
read moreYou Can’t Out Train Your Diet
#TeamUnbreakable #SmartBike #FastTrackingACure #Paralysis I was apprehensive as I rolled in my wheelchair onto the scales in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. The screen said 111.3 kilograms for the combined weight of my chair and me. And, as I reversed off the...
read moreRobots, Smart Bikes and Team UnBreakable
My empty wheelchair disappears behind me as I walk across the sports hall in my robotic legs. Dr. Neil Fleming monitors the electrical stimulation unit that is pushing current into my damaged spinal cord. And, Simon O’Donnell shadows me calling out the data from my...
read moreBack in the saddle
#SmartBike #TeamUnbreakable #ArrowElectronics The streets of Belfast were nearly empty, just a handful of buses and the odd car easing through the city. It was the summer of 1994 when the Tour De France had not yet been tarnished by widespread drugs scandals and my...
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