The wheels; a spinal cord injury (SCI) (Part 1)

Welcome back!

I know it's been a while ago since I posted something, but here I am ;). 

The Spinal Cord Injury; what's it like?

Feeling

The spinal cord injury causes me to be wheelchair-bounded, yes, but it comes with much more than just the wheelchair (!). 

In my post about 'the accident' I said I couldn't feel anything because of the spinal cord injury. In the period of recovery, some of the feeling came back. Not everywhere though; there are certain areas in which I can't feel anything. The feeling that did came back is not the same as how it used to be; I still hardly feel anything from the waist down, but what I do feel, feels very 'dull'. Like if you are touching it through a very thick layer of skin. 

Besides this, weird, 'new' feeling, I also can't feel any temperature. People often ask me questions like: 'what do you feel if you don't feel any temperature?'. Well, this question is kind of hard to answer. I described it to my parents as if you are wearing a very, very thick winter coat and somebody touches you. You can feel that you're being touched, but without feeling temperature.

Besides temperature, I also can't feel any pain! This is pretty scary, actually. If I accidentally like bump my toes against something, they will start tingling for a couple of seconds. After that tingling, it's gone. Then I have to check regularly if my toes get red or something like that, because when I do have something (a wound for example) I don't feel it.

Movement

Because my SCI is incomplete, I can move my legs. 

In the beginning, when I just came out of the hospital, I could not feel or move anything. In the process of recovery, a little of these two came back. 

In the rehabilitation center, I started with rolling, because I could not move anything besides my arms.

At a certain point, I could use my thighs well enough to try to start walking in 'the bridge': 

This actually was 80% walking with my arms, which was pretty intensive. 

While I kept on training, my legs began to function more and more. When leaving the rehabilitation center, I could still only walk in the bridge, and I could not stand up straight without holding on to something with both hands.

I continued to rehabilitate somewhere closer. In this center I tried to walk in an 'exo-skeleton'. It's like a robotic suit, which basically does all the walking by itself. I just had to focus on dividing my weight over my feet. Here is a video: 

Every time I stopped moving, I did not put enough weight on the correct foot; then the exo-skeleton could not move. That's how you can see how hard it was for me!

But that video is almost a year ago. Of course a lot has changed in time, because I have not stopped practicing 'skills' such as standing without holding myself. 

I will explain more about that in another post, this is it for now ;).

See you!

Terry