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ATTLEBORO - For the past 12 years Cathy Hutchinson has been unable to speak, move her extremities or do most of the other things people her age take for granted.

But the 55-year-old grandmother, rendered a paraplegic by a devastating stroke, speaks volumes about the potential of the disabled through her daily life.

Robbed of most physical abilities, she controls her electric wheelchair by moving her head to activate a switch. She can activate the lights in her room and read and answer e-mail with the aid of a device called BrainGate that converts her very thoughts into actions and lets her write on a computer screen.



But Hutchinson's biggest statement came in a class action lawsuit she began last year to uphold the rights of brain-injured patients like herself.

The lawsuit, which she and her co-plaintiffs won, will allow many with similar disabilities to return home with the assistance of home health aides.

"I want to send a message of hope to disabled people," Hutchinson told a visiting reporter in a recent interview at the Boston Home rehabilitative care center in Dorchester.

She dictated her words to her son, Brian, who took down her answers letter-by-letter using a pad system based on five rows of letters arranged in columns.

Although paralyzed, Hutchinson has sent a message that is loud and clear.

Hutchinson was the lead plaintiff in the federal lawsuit brought by her and four other disabled people with the help of the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts and the Stavros Center for Independent Living.

The suit charged that the state was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by failing to provide adequate community services. The lawsuit, latere settled by the state, affects about 2,000 Bay State residents with severe brain injuries.

"Cathy is truly an amazing person," says Arlene Korab, executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts. "She is such an example of how someone with a severe disability and limitations can have tremendous power and make an important difference."

Because of her efforts on behalf of the disabled, Hutchinson was recently presented with the Ted Martineau Advocacy Award by the Stavros Center.

But far beyond her efforts on the legal front, the former Attleboro woman has also blazed a trail in helping to prove the validity of BrainGate, developed by Foxboro-based Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems. The revolutionary device employs a computer interface that captures impulses from the human brain and allows users to communicate and perform tasks merely by thinking about them. Hutchinson was even featured in a recent segment on the CBS News program 60 Minutes highlighting the new technology.

Surrounded by her son, his fiancee Hanna O'Neal, and their three children, Hutchinson smiled during a visit with a Sun Chronicle reporter and answered e-mailed questions.

She said she remains active sending and receiving e-mails, relishes visits by her family and grandchildren and has recently begun speech therapy. She's hopeful about one day returning to the home she left in Attleboro and believes that one day technology like BrainGate will even make it possible for paralyzed muscles to move again.

All of this seems impossible from the vantage of 12 years ago, when a sudden stroke turned the former postal employee and enthusiastic gardener into a paraplegic.

"I remember I had been helping her in the garden and we sat down to watch the Celtics," said Brian Hutchinson, then 18. "But then she started talking gibberish, and she had to have help to get upstairs."

Hutchinson and his younger sister stood by horrified as their mother was rushed first to Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro and then to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where the prognosis was just short of hopeless.

"They didn't expect her to make it," Brian Hutchinson said.

But instead she rallied, drawing on an inner strength that would ultimately sustain her efforts to improve the lives of brain injured patients like herself.

Typically, her son said, mother wasn't thinking solely of her own case when she agreed to become a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

"My aunt Dotty, my mother's older sister, fell and hurt herself badly," he said. "So, she had to spend time in a home, and it was far away from where she lived."

Cathy Hutchinson, then living in a nursing home, could relate. So, she readily agreed to sign onto a lawsuit that would ultimately enable hundreds of handicapped people the chance to live fuller, more natural lives either at home with loved ones or in assisted living facilities.

Besides moving to more pleasant surroundings at the Boston Home, Hutchinson has enjoyed living a fuller life as a result of the miraculous technological advances that allow her to communicate and move around.

A button that she manipulates by moving her head allows her to write on a computer screen by scanning individual letters. A similar device allows her to control her wheelchair and move around The Boston Home independently.

Twice a week, in sessions of four hours each, Hutchinson is wired to the BrainGate system through a connection attached to her skull. The technology is in its early development, and requires a great deal of mental effort from Hutchinson.

"She has to concentrate really hard," her son said. "It's pretty exhausting for her."

Yet Hutchinson is upbeat and said she's glad to be part of a process that may eventually help liberate her and others like her from the prison of their impaired bodies.

Hutchinson hasn't given up on her natural abilities either.

Unable to speak since shortly after the stroke, she's throwing herself into the early stages of speech therapy. She's already uttered her first word - Mama.

Asked if she'd like to try to repeat the word in the presence of a reporter, Hutchinson was able to press her lips together to make the sound of the letter "M," but was unable to complete the word.

His mother's therapy has its ups and downs, Brian Hutchinson said.

For Cathy Hutchinson there will be other days, and other words.

It's only natural for a woman who, while she may not be able to speak or move, has never recognized the meaning of surrender.