My Personal Experience with Spinal Cord Injuries

This past fall my dad suffered a spinal cord injury , which disrupts the signals between the spinal cord and nerves that run down the middle of your back.   An injury can be considered complete or incomplete and can vary greatly depending on which vertebrae is injured.  I’m interested to learn and  share as much about it so I can better assist my dad and understand what challenges he faces everyday.

Struggles come along with complete or incomplete injuries. Incomplete injuries usually mean “unfinished” or “not perfect yet” as complete injuries mean “total” or “whole”. In my dad’s case he is a complete motor and an incomplete sensory injury. With him being partially incomplete he hasn’t lost all of his sensation and is able to move his hands.  This means there is hope.  Hope for some recovery.  Everything is unknown and anything is possible.

Some patients do become “cured” or do recover from a spinal cord injury.  The best chance for a complete recovery is from rigorous rehabilitation and great determination.  My dad spent the previous three months working with Craig Hospital in Denver, Co and has continued his therapies upon returning home this spring.   His therapy has become his full-time job.  Along with a rigorous and tiring therapy schedule, he has learned to adjust his daily operations while working to regain normal function.

Craig Hospital has been instrumental in helping my dad to learn to live with his current state of functioning as well as teach him ways to retrain his nerves and nerve pathways to normal functioning in the future.  Craig is a leader in the industry for spinal cord and brain injuries.  Craig has also helped my dad make connections with other individuals with similar injuries and at varying levels in the recovery process.  This is especially helpful so he doesn’t feel isolated and has others he can talk to about what to expect.

This is a journey that we have only just begun and there is so much to try and understand.  I know that there will be ups and downs for my dad and my family.  Luckily, the fight to cure spinal cord injuries continues with continued research and advances in medicine.  The Christopher Reeve foundation is leading the way to continued advancements and knowledge.

 

Questions:

1)    How can we be more efficient when helping people with spinal cord injuries?

2)    Is there way to exactly know if someone is complete or incomplete better?

3)    How can we make the world a better place for people with spinal cord injuries?

9 thoughts on “My Personal Experience with Spinal Cord Injuries

  1. This blog relates to me as I have recently had a family friend that has damaged his spinal chord and is immobile from the waist down. With further research I learned that to minimize the damages caused to the nerves and spinal chord you should completely immobilize the spine right after the injury so it doesn’t move into the chord. My family friend recently went to a research lab in Florida that is focusing on STEM cells because they might be able to regain mobilization in some people with spinal chord injuries. This website http://www.eurostemcell.org/factsheet/spinal-cord-injuries-how-could-stem-cells-help says that STEM cells can help because they are able to imitate the cells they surround. If the cells are put around the spinal chord before scaring of the chord occurs, they may able to regain mobility in some people.

  2. I thought your blog was very interesting and informative. I like how you added your personal story into it, and the research you did was helpful to you and your family. I think one way we can help patients with these injuries is create places of care for them closer to home. I think when you are surrounded not only by your family and other supporters but also people who are going through the same thing, you can become even more motivated. The link below talks about the types of spinal injuries and syndromes from them.

    http://www.brainandspinalcord.org/spinal-cord-injuries/index.html

  3. Your blog was very well written and very informal. I like how you used your own personal experience to let other people know the reality of a spine injury. On the website I found, I learned that the spot on your spinal cord you injured determines what type of control will be damaged. The main symptoms of a spinal injury are loss in control and sensation. You should always get immediate help when you may think you or someone you know may have a severe spinal injury. Please visit this link for more information: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/spinal-cord-injury/basics/symptoms/con-20023837

    I wish the best for your dad and your family.

  4. I found your blog to be very informative. I really like how you added a personal story to your blog because it showed your connection to this topic. It’s unfortunate that not much research has been done on this topic yet but many doctors are hopeful for more studies to be done. It must be hard to not know the outcome of an injury like this form the start.

    http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/spinal-cord-injury/basics/definition/con-20023837

  5. This is a touching blog to me and you being able to talk about and try to find a cure. If it was me I would completely lost and wouldn’t know what to do. The videos you posted helped me better understand spinal cord injuries and more about it. Also with the blog it was interesting to me because I never really thought about injuries like that. To make the world a better place for people with spinal cord injuries, we could do a lot. One of the things we can do is make things easier for them. By that I mean some people with injuries to the spinal cord like to be independent so make things they can do on their own. Plus if they lost their confidence from the injury it could start to build it back up for them. This website I found has a lot of great information on it and would encourage you to read it. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm

  6. This is a touching blog to me and you being able to talk about and try to find a cure. If it was me I would completely lost and wouldn’t know what to do. The videos you posted helped me better understand spinal cord injuries and more about it. Also with the blog it was interesting to me because I never really thought about injuries like that. To make the world a better place for people with spinal cord injuries, we could do a lot. One of the things we can do is make things easier for them. By that I mean some people with injuries to the spinal cord like to be independent so make things they can do on their own. Plus if they lost their confidence from the injury it could start to build it back up for them. This website I found has a lot of great information on it and would encourage you to read it. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm

  7. This was a touching blog to me and you being able to talk about and try to find a cure. If it was me I would completely lost and wouldn’t know what to do. The videos you posted helped me better understand spinal cord injuries and more about it. Also with the blog it was interesting to me because I never really thought about injuries like that. To make the world a better place for people with spinal cord injuries, we could do a lot. One of the things we can do is make things easier for them. By that I mean some people with injuries to the spinal cord like to be independent so make things they can do on their own. Plus if they lost their confidence from the injury it could start to build it back up for them. This website I found has a lot of great information on it and would encourage you to read it. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm

  8. This was a touching blog to me and you being able to talk about and try to find a cure. If it was me I would completely lost and wouldn’t know what to do. The videos you posted helped me better understand spinal cord injuries and more about it. Also with the blog it was interesting to me because I never really thought about injuries like that. To make the world a better place for people with spinal cord injuries, we could do a lot. One of the things we can do is make things easier for them. By that I mean some people with injuries to the spinal cord like to be independent so make things they can do on their own. Plus if they lost their confidence from the injury it could start to build it back up for them. This website I found has a lot of great information on it and would encourage you to read it. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm

  9. I thought your blog was very interesting and had a lot of good information. I think that people with spinal cord injuries could seek help from specialists even though they are already working with specialists. Maybe if they seek different doctors they could give new information that could help. I am not really sure what they go through to figure out if there is different ways to know if it’s incomplete or not but I am sure there are a lot of different information about it. A way we could make the world a better place for spinal cord injuries would be to inform people of how spinal cord injuries can affect people. Here is a link about incomplete and complete spinal injuries.

    http://www.apparelyzed.com/

    I find this very interesting and think this has great information.

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