Health

Health: Second Life

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― Nanci Schenkein was once a real life event planner but an illness took it all away.

"One day I started to feel numb. And over a period of a few days the numbness moved up my feet all the way through my body. And I knew I was really in trouble," said Nanci.

Nanci was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Doctors told her she had to retire. That's when she turned to Second Life. It's a 3-D digital world left to the imagination of those who join. Nanci is a wedding planner in Second Life, for people who want a virtual event.

"I have a very nice business, a very lovely home, wonderful friends, which is the greatest of the lucky. And I've had the fortune in second life to do some amazing things" said Nanci.

And amazing is how a lot of people describe the virtual character Wilde Cunningham. He's become sort of a celebrity in second life.

A group of people with Cerebral Palsy created Wilde Cunningham together. Freed from a wheelchair and the constraints of disease, in Second Life they can run, fly, power a speedboat. And most important, they're treated like regular people, something they rarely get in real life.

"From their perspective they spent so much of their lives little and small and less worthy than other people, just from their challenges, that when they're received with kind of a warmth, it's really empowering. It affects their whole self image and their self confidence" said June Marie Mahay, who helped the group create Wilde.

It's free to sign up but you actually pay to build your own world, or to have a wedding planner like Nanci's virtual character.

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