When one walks into the Neuro Institute, the 6,500 square foot center feels more like a state-of-the-art fitness club than a rehabilitation clinic. The wide open space houses more than $100,000 in exercise equipment specially modified for wheelchair accessibility and features a basketball court and a climbing wall.

However, the Neuro Institute is much more than a community gym. It offers specialized rehabilitation and therapy programs for patients challenged with Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis and all forms of paralysis. The Neuro Institute staff concentrates their efforts on improving patients’ daily living skills through occupational, physical, massage and speech therapies and integrate other skills, like driving, based on individual needs.

"We want to give as many neurologically challenged individuals as possible the opportunity for success," says Arnie Fonseca Jr., owner and founder of the Neuro Institute. "We want every patient to have access to their potential to get back into as normal of a life as possible. We don’t promise any miracles, but we do believe they can happen."

 

A unique philosophy

In October 1995, Joe Slayton was involved in a car accident that left him quadriplegic. He was hospitalized for four months and doctors told him he would probably never walk again. He spent one year in a Mesa outpatient rehabilitation program before he was told he had hit a plateau in his progress. "They told me they couldn't help me anymore," Slayton says. "I was out of therapy for about five years before I started working with Arnie."

After nearly a year and a half of rehabilitation and physical therapy, Slayton is now ambulatory with the assistance of a "quad" walker and credits much of his recent success to his work with Fonseca.

"I was kind of lazy before I started working out with Arnie," says Slayton. "He pushes me to the maximum limit and gets me motivated."

Fonseca, an exercise physiologist, has been working with neurologically challenged and brain injured patients for more than 12 years.

"Neurologically challenged people have different levels of function," Fonseca explains. "Some people have paralysis but still have some movement or function. I want to find those people and challenge them to use their function, and maybe even get them from an electric wheelchair to a manual one. I want to work with the people who have been told 'We've done everything we can do for you.'"

The Neuro Institute's programs are individually designed to meet the needs of each patient. Occupational and physical therapists work with patients and their families to develop realistic goals and desired outcomes.

"Even if a patient is on a ventilator, they can still benefit from our program," says Fonseca. "There are still many things we can do for them."

"That's how we operate. We never take "no" for an answer, we just keep working with the patients on an individual basis until we find the treatment that works best for them, and we get results."