Originally posted by Gaz
Couldn't Xavier use any part of his power to make his legs work? Or would that just be telekinesis?.... Doesn't that mean Jean could make them work...? Confoosion....
Originally, Xavier's legs were crushed in an accident. I guess he just narrowly escaped having them amputated, which is the usual thing that happens with crushed bones. In any case, they couldn't support his weight anymore. This is the reason why Xavier can still sit upright and lean forward in his chair. When someone is truly paraplegic (i.e., paralyzed from the waist down), their muscles don't work at all, and they can't balance on their own like that. His muscles work somewhat, at least enough for balancing.
In order for things to truly be "physics correct", Xavier's legs should be emaciated twigs. When you can't use muscles, they atrophy, even with physical therapy. (Without PT, the joints lock up, which is even worse.) However, that's a pretty disturbing sight, so I can understand why no comic artists wanted to draw that.
And as for anything helping him walk:
1) Xavier isn't a telekinetic. He had no way of forming some sort of "TK exo-suit" around him to help walk. Telepathy might be able to shut the pain off, but it doesn't do anything to physically strengthen mangled limbs.
2) He could have used crutches and leg braces instead of a wheelchair. In this case, I think it was personal preference.
3) Jean
might have been able to help him walk, but then you get into the issue of mobility and dependence. This is one of the reasons why Xavier uses a wheelchair instead: it gives him a measure of independence and self-mobility. Few things are more degrading than being utterly dependent on someone, and being utterly dependent to walk is about as demoralizing as you can get. The wheelchair would be infinitely preferable to both Jean and Xavier in this instance.
Originally, when Xavier was first "regenerated" after the X-Men's fight with The Brood, he had a whole body, but he still couldn't walk. There was some sort of mental, psychosomatic block against it that he had to go through. It took a long time before he could actually walk on his own.
Originally posted by LadyErin
But I thought Xavier was already blad-fully bald-in high school and that's early for MPB-and I thought I read somewhere that his power did cause it..i don't know...
Yeah, High School is awful early for MPD, tho it does happen sometimes. More likely, instead of his telepathy "causing" it, I'll bet the MPD was accellerated by the mutant gene that
caused his telepathy to blossom. In this case, it's not so much the power itself causing the MPD as it is a linked condition.
