{"id":346056,"date":"2025-12-13T08:34:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346056\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T08:34:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T08:34:15","slug":"dancing-wheelchair-helps-paralyzed-teen-feel-cool-being-a-different-sort-of-dancer-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346056\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Dancing Wheelchair&#8217; Helps Paralyzed Teen Feel &#8216;Cool&#8217; Being a Different Sort of Dancer (WATCH)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-226670\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/credit-Allyson-Keiser-1024x562.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"696\" height=\"382\"  \/>credit \u2013 Allyson Keiser<\/p>\n<p>With a little ingenuity, and some modifications to an old piece of tech, 11-year-old Desa Kaiser is back where she belongs: on the dance floor.<\/p>\n<p>Being paralyzed from the waist down is no impediment to the girl from Pennsylvania, who suffered the debilitating injury in a crash that saw her spend Thanksgiving of 2022 at the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>She can spin around\u2014just like she did in ballet, jazz, and funk dance classes before her injury. She can lean all the way back and touch the ground in this flexible \u201cdancing wheelchair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Speaking with CBS News 3 Philadelphia, Kaiser <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/adaptive-dance-wheelchair-shriners-hospital-philadelphia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">said<\/a> it\u2019s cool to be different.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s cool to be different from other people and more unique in different ways. It\u2019s an amazing chair that\u2019s different from others, because you can be more free in it and you can express a lot more in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following the car collision, Kaiser was treated at Shriners Children\u2019s Hospital, where she still undergoes physical therapy for her trunk and arms. It takes a lot of puff to spin that chair around to the beat of the music, and physical therapist Maggie Reilly is helping her build up the strength for it.<\/p>\n<p>MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: <a title=\"Dozens of Disabled Californians Sail for the First Time to Experience the Weightlessness of the Water\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodnewsnetwork.org\/dozens-of-disabled-californians-sail-for-the-first-time-to-experience-the-weightlessness-of-the-water\/\" rel=\"bookmark nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dozens of Disabled Californians Sail for the First Time to Experience the Weightlessness of the Water<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to bring her a chair that would allow her to dance and do what she loves,\u201d Reilly said. \u201cOne thing that we strive most to do here at Shriners is letting children achieve their goals in whatever way that may be possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kaiser\u2019s parents said that unlike 3 years ago, this Thanksgiving they had a lot to be thankful for.<\/p>\n<p>WATCH Desa go on CBS News below\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SHARE This Girl\u2019s Individuality Blossom Out Of A Disaster\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"credit \u2013 Allyson Keiser With a little ingenuity, and some modifications to an old piece of tech, 11-year-old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12176,736,172897,97,47608,2085,5573,142417,684,18224,24375],"class_list":["post-346056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-dance","tag-disability","tag-great-kids","tag-health","tag-paralysis","tag-philadelphia","tag-positive","tag-positive-psychology","tag-self-esteem","tag-teens","tag-wheelchair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}