Every spinal cord injury is like a snowflake- no two are the same. For the past 4 years, she lived with T5 complete spinal cord injury, paralyzing everything below her mid-chest. Through it all woman of steel chooses education over silence and empowerment over shame!
September is spinal cord injury awareness month and I would love to share some awareness on my injury. For the last 4 years I have lived with a T5 complete spinal cord injury. SCI’s are actually pretty rare, fewer than 200,000 US cases per year and just 20% of those are women.
My injury is a complete injury meaning a compression of the spinal cord that entirely eliminates the brains ability to send or receive any signals below the point of injury. That includes signals that control both movements and sensations. I bruised my spinal cord at the T5 vertebrae meaning anything below that is completely paralyzed.
The thing about spinal cord injury’s is every injury is different. You could be injured doing the same thing and have the same exact injury but have two totally different experiences. I have heard snowflakes being compared to spinal cord injury’s saying, no two snowflakes are alike. So what happened to me and the results of my accident aren’t like anyone else, I think that’s pretty fascinating.
Spinal cord injury’s are hard. Being in a wheelchair is hard. But one thing I would never take away is having that opportunity to educate people on my disability or disability’s in general. Everyone is different when it comes to discussing their disability. Some people are brand new and don’t even want to be reminded of what has happened, others could spend all day talking about their disability.
For me it’s my life and I love talking and educating people on things that might seem super foreign to them. If anyone ever has any questions or comments please ask away, the more people educated the more aware and accepting they will be.
