March 14, 2025
Save the Date: Fundraising Gala & Silent Auction - April 26!
Quinn Brett
The Bird’s Nest Cafe in Estes Park, CO is hosting a Fundraising Gala and Silent Auction to benefit Unite 2 Fight Paralysis!
Money raised from ticket sales and auction items goes directly to Unite 2 Fight Paralysis’ work to accelerate treatments and functional recovery research for folks living with a spinal cord injury (SCI).
Click the link below to email me and reserve your spot for this fun evening of philanthropy and friends!
Reserve Your Spot
Many people who aren’t injured don’t realize all the secondary complications that abound with this injury - neuropathic pain (think hot needles stabbing you without warning throughout your day), urinary tract infections, pressure sores, and the body’s inability to regulate your blood pressure - just to name a few of them.
Many of these can become life threatening (think sepsis from UTIs because you don’t catch it quickly because...you have to use catheters!) You have to have a bowel program that can take an hour or longer. And the icing on the cake: reduced or lost sexual pleasure and/or function. Fun!
And then, yeah, we want to walk again too. Why can’t we do both? I want to get the smaller gains on the way to the big win. We shouldn't negate the 'little' things just because the ultimate goal is to get us up walking and running like our pre-injured selves.
Here I am a couple years ago - doing the first Rim to Rim on an adaptive trike (with help from a great crew)! As great as that was, I’d love to return to the Grand Canyon with some of my bodily functions restored.
Unite 2 Fight Paralysis takes all this seriously because the majority of our staff and board live with the injury or are a family/caregiver to someone with the injury. We think people with an SCI should be at the center of the treatment and research process so that we fix this shit fast and correctly. And our small but smart grassroots effort is having a huge return on investment for me and my community.
Consider a few of our accomplishments:
- Passed $40M in state legislation over the past 8 years that is overseen by SCI scientists and those of us in the community. These research grants have already restored some level of lost function in 200 individuals with an SCI - and we’re close to passing another $5M bill in Wisconsin right now!
- Placed 19 individuals with a spinal cord injury into 10 SCI research labs as lived-experience consultants. This now includes a handful of our best consultants serving on the federal level for the Department of Defense’s medical review board for SCI research proposals. We don’t have the money to pay them (yet!). They all participate in the hopes that the research will someday benefit our community.
- 20 years of educating the SCI community on curative research at our Annual Science & Advocacy Symposium. This event allows SCI individuals to learn about the latest science and also give the scientists much needed exposure to a room of injured folks they often don’t get the opportunity to talk with.
Traci Fernandez recently demonstrated her improved sit-to-stand transfer thanks to a stimulator that was a direct result of our work! In 2015, U2FP helped the SCI community pass the Minnesota SCI/TBI Research Grant bill,leading to the EStand Trial.
So join us on April 26th at the Bird’s Nest in Estes Park, CO! Ticket prices include a beverage (Lumpy Ridge beer, Root Shoot whiskey or wine), some fancy snacks (provided by Bird’s Nest) and an opportunity to bid for some amazing artwork, outdoor gear, guided trips to Rocky Mountain National Park, a fully accessible water-front Florida vacation house and more!
Plus, we’ll hear remarks from veteran and former Colorado state representative David Ortiz, who is also a member of the SCI community. We are even working to make the auction online - so if you can’t attend the event, you could still get some amazing items while supporting U2FP’s important work.
Come join me - it will be a blast. You’ll have a super fun evening, eat and drink some great local fare, and buy some high-quality art or even book an outdoor adventure or great vacation. Many of you will do all of these things this year anyway - why not do it AND change some lives in the process.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
