Over 12,000 people will become paraplegics in North America this year.
Most of them will be young, white males between 18 and 30 involved in a motor vehicle, sporting or other accidents.
Don’t become one of this year’s sad statistics. Most of these life-changing accidents are preventable.
Summer has started already with highway accidents. Headlines tell the tales of single auto and motorcycle accidents where the driver or passenger dies. About 35,000 people will die on the highways this year in Canada and the USA.
The 12,000 survivor stories of life-changing pain and misery following a spinal cord injury or other disabling condition are not reported.
Other people will have sporting accidents. On one of my visits to Out-Patients for my cast removal, they set 10 children in casts for trampoline accidents in one afternoon. Good start for summer.
Falls are a major source of accidents. We can let our homes become mine-fields of disaster with careless safety standards that are regretted later.
Just using a wheelchair for a day, like the politicians do from time to time, is no indication of how hard life is for those disabled with spinal injuries or other disabilities.
They face an uphill battle to regain a part of the normal life that we all take for granted.
It only takes a second of carelessness to become disabled.
I’ve been disabled for more than a decade, but still had the ability to walk. Losing that that after a broken leg from a fall this month was a good object lesson in how miserable life can get.
Along with the pain and loss of freedom came simple indignities like waiting for someone to empty my urine bottle at 3 AM. It’s a long time to 8 AM with a painfully full bladder.
Did I mention that peeing into a plastic bottle is not comfortable nor dignified?
The first time I tried the toilet with a leg cast, I fell sideways onto the floor. I was happy to be constipated from codeine.
Causes of spinal cord paraplegia (chart – Foundation for Spinal Cord Injury Prevention, Care & Cure)
Next time you want to drive after drinking, consider what life would be like using a catheter up your penis to urinate.
Before performing some death-defying stunt to impress friends or just be crazy, think about a life of dependence versus independence.
That’s life for paraplegics. It’s unpleasant and a constant health hazard.
For paraplegics who survive the accident, one of the biggest causes of death is renal failure.
The reason young men are the biggest victims of paraplegia is their testosterone-fueled belief they are invincible. The speed on land and sea. They drink and boat, surf and drive.
The thrill and freedom from cause and effect delude young men into thinking they are invincible.
Sometimes they are the cause of their own condition.
I met one quadriplegic who had two auto accidents. Both were the result of driving under the influence. The first one made him a paraplegic: the second a quad.
Another young man of 18 became a paraplegic after his friend rolled the car one Friday night. The friend escaped with only scratches. The sad 18-year-old was facing the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Hopefully, I and other accident victims will get back to walking and doing most of the things we did before.
For me, it was a wake-up call that everything I took for granted could be lost in a split second.
Be careful this summer.
Slow down and don’t drive or let someone else drive if you’re partying.
Research – Foundation for Spinal Cord Injury Prevention, Care & Cure and Wikipedia.
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