Today marks a milestone of sorts. It’s been 100 days since my first A&E visit for what turned out to be a spinal cord injury.
It presented as intense pain in my lower back. Numbness. Couldn’t feel my feet. I also had a severe kidney infection at the same time. Perhaps a result of the loss of feeling. It would be about another month for the injury to be understood and a few weeks later before we really knew what it meant.
My spinal cord injury is ‘life changing’.
While I’ve never been super independent, this is a huge change. If I was ‘five’ before I am now ‘three’. I needed a whole lot more help as my movement was so limited. Especially in the early days.
Since then, we have made so much progress.
The biggest highlight would be getting back out cycling on a recumbent trike at 7 weeks. That’s the day when I knew I wouldn’t just survive I would thrive. That post injury life would be joyful again.
At week 9 or so, I really started to understand my injury. Learning about my legs and sides and how they interacted. Around this time I started effectively managing my tailbone pain. I did a partial return to work.
We’re just coming up to the end of week 14 and we’re breaking new ground. After a week of intensive physio we have learnt a ton. I’ve learnt that if I want to do stuff with my body then the price i pay is paid in pain. However the more I do it, the easier it may become.
I’m out riding my bike. It may only be for a few minutes at a time but it works. In the next few days I’m visiting my favourite local bike park. See what I can do.
It’s been 100 hard and wild days. 14 weeks of learning and love. My friends have been phenomenal. We’ve engineered a future I am excited for and that might just be the biggest achievement we could have dreamed of
100 days in and I am genuinely happy. I can’t wait to see what the next 100 days will bring.
