Margie Visconti can't remember the car that ran her off the road when she was 20 years old, smashing her car, cracking her skull in several places and permanently damaging her brain.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette
	Following a wheelchair safety program at UPMC Rehabilitation Hospital in Squirrel Hill, Margie Visconti, right, talks with Helen Davis, who communicates using a keypad device. Visconti and Davis are both from Banksville.

Nor could she remember, when she finally came out of her coma, anything about her family or herself.

"I relearned my past through photographs," said Visconti, 41, as she watched fellow participants in a wheelchair obstacle course at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Rehabilitation Hospital navigate over ropes, seesaws and doorways yesterday. "I relearned to talk and walk. I'm still relearning."

Visconti, a Banksville resident who has used a wheelchair since the accident, was one of about 24 patients and former UPMC patients who attended the Squirrel Hill rehabilitation hospital's first "wheelchair slalom" yesterday.

Most had suffered brain or spinal cord injuries from accidents -- falling down a flight of steps, landing in the wrong spot on a motocross track, crashing an ATV in the middle of the night, getting hit by a truck -- that have confined them to wheelchairs, some temporarily and others for the rest of their lives.

Ranging in ability from people who race wheelchairs and have competed in the International Paralympics to those who strain to feed themselves, most participants rolled through the obstacle course at least once to applause and whoops of approval from UPMC staff members -- and some timed themselves.

The event was meant to give people in wheelchairs, who often find themselves socially isolated, a chance to meet other people and test their abilities, according to Rory Cooper, chairman of the rehabilitation science and technology department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Cooper and other organizers hope to hold the event at least once a year.

"It's meant to build their level of skill, build some confidence, try to have some fun and see what you can do in the chair," said Cooper, who lost the use of his legs 24 years ago after being hit by a semi-truck while riding his bicycle.

For some participants, the slalom offered a rare chance to get out of the house.

In Clarion, where Scott Beichner lives -- and where he had the 2001 ATV accident that paralyzed him from the middle of his back down -- there's not much to do for someone who can't walk. There also are few new people to meet and even fewer single women.

The wheelchair makes dating even more of a struggle, he said.

When Beichner gathered the courage to ask women out, some turned him down flat. Others showed only tepid interest, compounding his hesitancy.

"The only thing that bothers me about being in a chair is no confidence," said Beichner, 31.

For Visconti, many seemingly routine tasks -- remembering her age or capping her pen, for instance -- have become daily struggles since her car accident in July 1983.

That summer, Visconti had just finished her freshman year, studying interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. She had come home to Syracuse to work at her father's construction business for the summer, and she was dropping off some project bids from contractors when her car was run off the road by another driver.

She woke up knowing nothing and no one, and has been relearning everything she ever knew since then, she said.

"With my education and my career, the accident put my life on pause for a while," Visconti said.

In the first years after the accident, Visconti lived in rehabilitation hospitals in Syracuse, and then in an apartment with a roommate.

She studied Sesame Street to pick up letters, numbers and simple math and reading. She exercised to develop her fine motor skills and her upper body strength, and learned to pull herself out of her wheelchair by bars screwed into the wall. She learned how to maneuver into a shower chair and wash herself.

Ten years ago, Visconti met the chief executive officer of the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Pittsburgh, who decided she would benefit from UPMC's brain injury rehabilitation program. He persuaded her insurance company to let her move to Pittsburgh to take advantage of it.

She discovered how to write again, and even how to write in the cramped but legible cursive she uses to sign her bills, which an aide must fill out for her. And she learned to document and date everything she does, compensating for her memory loss by creating an alternate memory in a small, faded notebook she carries with her everywhere. She takes out her pen and notebook several times an hour.

Visconti's hand still wavers as she caps her pen. She tugs at the zipper of her small black case before slowly pulling it open, putting away the pen, and slowly zipping it closed.

But Visconti has created an ordered and largely self-sufficient life for herself.

On Saturday, she cleans her apartment and goes out with friends. On Sunday, she attends mass at St. Catherine of Siena in Beechview. She does her laundry on Monday, volunteers at Mercy Hospital on Tuesday, reads at the library on Wednesday and volunteers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Thursday.

On Friday, she shops for groceries. And although she can't remember exactly when she started shopping for herself, she does it all on her own.

"It took me six or seven years, but practice makes perfect," she said.