Boston Marathon
After a severe car accident, Michael Chiang’s sister relearned to walk — and ran a 5K. Now he’s running the 2026 Boston Marathon for Spaulding Rehabilitation.
Michael Chiang is running the 2026 Boston Marathon. (Photo courtesy of Michael Chiang)
March 17, 2026 | 4:30 PM
1 minute to read
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Name: Michael Chiang
Age: 37
From: Cambridge
It was mid-morning when I received a message from that my oldest sister Jennifer was in a bad accident. She couldn’t move half her body. Hours earlier she was T-boned by a high-velocity vehicle hitting her side of the vehicle and throwing her across the backseat of the car.
A few hours later, I received a phone call from the neurosurgical team that Jennifer needed to have her neck operated on – the joints of her spine were popped out of place, unstably resting in a position that could paralyze her if the surgical team did not fuse her neck. Her arm would not be able to regain function if the neck bones continued to compress her spinal nerves.
Jennifer went through a lengthy recovery – complications of pain management, post-surgical urinary retention, bowel management, and so on, the familiar issues one faces after a major surgery. I walked my sister through the course of her hospital stay into inpatient rehabilitation, just as I do with my patients when I was a PM&R [physical medicine and rehabilitation] resident at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
While I have taken care of countless patients like my sister, the experience felt more personal when it was my own family member working through rehabilitation. I gained a true appreciation of the value of inpatient rehabilitation after seeing my sister fight to walk again.
Four months later, she ran her first 5K. Six months later, she is now able to raise her arm to her shoulder. The quality of life that was lost, and regained, after rehabilitation is truly spectacular, and I have my utmost thanks to the surgical team, for stabilizing her neck, and the rehabilitation team for putting my sister back on her feet (quite literally).
Editor’s note: This entry may have been lightly edited for clarity or grammar.
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Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.
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