By ALAN BAVLEY

The Kansas City Star

“It’s a tingling, burning feeling. It’s not unpleasant. It’s very mild.”

Christopher Schmieder is expected home tonight from China, filled with hope that he will one day walk again.

The 18-year-old Louisburg, Kan., man was paralyzed from the chest down last year in an accident that damaged his spinal cord.

On Thanksgiving Day, he underwent a procedure at a hospital on the western outskirts of Beijing. Surgeons injected cells from aborted fetuses into his spine to promote regeneration of his spinal cord.

“It’s a pretty big deal to me. It’s my chance to walk,” Schmieder said late last week in a telephone interview from Beijing. “My goal is to be walking in a year.”

Schmieder said he already is regaining his sense of touch in his legs and feet. He also has constant sensations in his legs that he finds hard to describe.

“It’s a tingling, burning feeling,” he said. “It’s not unpleasant. It’s very mild.”

Schmieder was injured in August 2004 while painting his father’s house in Louisburg. He was 35 feet off the ground when his rented bucket lift tipped and catapulted him 45 feet. His twin brother, Garrett, found him 30 minutes later.

Huang Hongyun, the American-trained neurosurgeon who performed the surgery, was cautious but optimistic about how Schmieder would do.

“It’s hard for me to predict how much Christopher can recover his body functions,” Huang said. “It’s possible that he will be able to walk with braces … after a certain period. But I can’t say exactly when because the level of recovery is different with each individual case.”

Huang says he has operated on more than 300 patients from about 50 countries. He implants olfactory ensheathing glial cells, which are involved in the sense of smell.

The olfactory nerve, which sends sensations of smell to the brain, continually regenerates throughout a person’s life. The cells Huang uses support this regeneration by wrapping around nerve fibers and promoting their growth.

While other scientists have been able to replicate Huang’s results in animals, many have strong doubts about his work with paralyzed patients. So far, Huang hasn’t produced controlled studies that compare the progress of patients who receive the therapy to those who don’t. And critics say that much of his evidence of patient improvement is based on anecdotes, rather than on hard scientific measurements.

Even so, there is now a two-year international waiting list of patients seeking Huang’s treatment in Beijing.

While Schmieder was at the hospital, there were American patients from a half-dozen states, as well as others from Italy, Germany, the Philippines and Mexico. Their experiences were heartening, Schmieder said.

“I saw people getting more feeling, muscle control, things like that,” he said.

Schmieder was able to move to the top of the waiting list through the intervention of David Landewee, a Clay County resident who underwent the procedure in March and has been an outspoken advocate for spinal cord research.

Landewee suffered a spinal cord injury similar to Schmieder’s in an auto wreck 10 years ago. Since his surgery in Beijing, Landewee has maintained a rigorous schedule of exercise and physical therapy. He has regained the use of some muscles in his hips and now can walk as far as 375 feet using leg braces and a walker.

Schmieder’s mother, Christine Casto, read a story in The Kansas City Star about Landewee’s progress and got in touch with him. Schmieder and Landewee became friends.

Landewee accompanied Schmieder and Casto to China and took video of Schmieder’s operation for a cable network documentary.

“I think Christopher did all right,” Landewee said. “What he gets now depends on what he puts into it. Dr. Huang said there was no reason he couldn’t do as well as I did or even better if he put his mind to it.”

Schmieder’s mother was optimistic, too.

“I just think this is going to work,” Casto said. “You have the surgery. You have the hope, and then comes the work.”