Clarence Adoo is a gifted trumpeter who used to play with the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra. He even appeared on television in the early 1990s, but a car accident seven years ago left him paralysed from the neck down. The crash cruelly prevented one of this country’s most gifted classical trumpeter’s from continuing to play and he now needs 24-hour care.

Clarence says: “I regret the accident as an accident - but the experiences I have had since then have helped make me so much more aware as a whole person. There’s a lot of things I don’t take for granted now.”

The programme follows him as he visits the Jackson Memorial Hosptial in Miami, Florida where Dr Bernard Brucker is pioneering a controversial treatment for people with spinal injuries called Bio Feedback.

Dr Brucker’s theory is that cells which may recover from an accident or undamaged cells can be taught to carry signals from the brain which would have previously been transmitted by the now damaged cells.

Clarence, from Newcastle upon Tyne, believes the Bio Feedback treatment has given him some mobility in one arm. He says he can now lift one elbow which was immobile after the accident in which he broke his spine.

However the doctor who treated Clarence after the accident in 1995 believes the trumpet player’s progress can be explained by natural improvements made over time.

Clarence says: “It’s very difficult living for the cure and accepting the situation you are in. I run around and keep myself busy and some people would say that perhaps I haven’t accepted my situation; but every day you have to although I don’t think I will spend the whole of my life in a wheelchair.”