Cantwell

Spinal Cord Injury ? The Afterlife

Am I speaking about death right here? No, Im speaking about life immediately after a spinal cord injury. Why did I phrase the title of this article as I did? Because for many men and women who suffer a spinal cord injury, their 1st thoughts following getting informed of paralysis, or wheelchairs, or a severed spinal cord, causing the patient to by no means be able to stroll once again, is indeed death. Why did I even reside?

I know that was a single of my earliest thoughts right after I was capable to comprehend what was going on. Once I regained consciousness from my three days of coma, by awakening to a breathing tube getting pulled from my throat, I was advised that I had an accident.

Perhaps a few hours later, its hard to recall precisely, I began to comprehend the great distress in the doctors face and voice as he communicated to me about how my spine was broken in three areas and the bone fragments had severed my spinal cord, and as a outcome I would never ever be in a position to walk once more for cord blood. Maybe it was at that time that I very first wished myself dead.

Now its twenty-two years later. Ive had twenty-two years of using a wheelchair for mobility. Ive had twenty-two years of Afterlife. My spinal cord is nevertheless severed. I nevertheless have paralysis from chest-level down (T-four to be precise). I have several wheelchairs a basketball wheelchair, a tennis wheelchair, an daily wheelchair. Over the years Ive most likely had close to ten distinct wheelchairs. All of the chairs, all of the catheters, all of the baclofen, all of the leg bags and tubes, all of the paralysis paraphernalia thanks to one particular moment in time of loosing handle of my car, hitting a guardrail, tree, and property, snapping my spine in 3 places and injuring my spinal cord.

Wouldnt it have been far better if I just didnt have this kind of after life and experienced the bog finale afterlife as an alternative? Properly, I cant answer that for confident since I have not been able to evaluate the two side by side. But I can inform you that you can have a life and a rather rewarding and fulfilling life, if you so decide on, even after a spinal cord injury.

Michael E. Hylton, TheWheeledWorld.org, June, 2006