Thanks MB.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend. It's a tough road ahead for her and an even tougher pill to swallow. My worst moments came shortly after my surgery while I was alone in the hospital. My injury was not complete (spinal cord NOT severed) so I always knew that I had a chance of walking again, but not knowing when or if that would happen is a mental tug of war that's difficult to accept. Waking up and looking at a wheelchair next to your bed and knowing that no matter how hard you want to stand up and walk away, it's not going to happen. It's a gut rot that will eat you from the inside out. Eventually even that gets easier.
I was fortunate on so many levels. My neurosurgeon is world-renowned, Craig Hospital is 20 minutes away from my house and has been rated Top 10 in the world for 26 years in row
Craig Hospital, my initial accident and even my second injury didn't require immediate/emergent surgery (sort of) and I have an amazing family and a great group of friends. (MUD community included) MANY of the MUD friends I have came to my house to help or visited me in the hospital. I am on a rehab program built for Denver Broncos and Denver Nuggets players and I even trained and rehabbed on some of their equipment. Really top level stuff. Makoto machines, Alter-G anti-gravity treadmills, exo-suits, Bioness stim machines..... anything and everything that professional athletes use was available. I know I got lucky with the cards I was dealt. I put down 3 clunkers and picked up 3 aces.
I can walk now. I can stand on my own, I can jump (about an inch), I can climb stairs on my own, and I can finally drive again. I still have a ways to go and I may never be where I was a year ago, but mentally I'm 10 times the man I was before this injury. I appreciate my family, my friends and my life so much more. I worked harder at beating this than anything I've ever faced in my life. It made my time in the Marine Corps seem like a toddler jungle gym. It required mental and physical strength that I didn't know I had.
I'm still in rehab 2-3 days per week and in the gym every single day. We're working on making the correct signals and connections to get to/from my brain, cord and muscles. You can really tell that I have an injury when I try to run. But less than 90 days ago, I couldn't even move my legs, so I'll take it all day, every day.
It's important for your friend to know that everyone's success in their own. One small victory at a time. Being able to get yourself in and out of the bathroom is a victory. Heck, being able to go to the bathroom (Wag Bag 1 and 2) is probably the biggest victory a SCI patient can have, maybe even bigger than actually standing for the first time. As odd as it is for regular adults to talk about bowel and bladder function, it's still the first thing we talk about when I meet other patients or friends that I made while I was inpatient.
I don't have the words to express how grateful I am to everyone in the MUD, TLCA and Rising Sun communities.
