You Are Not Your Body

Spinal Cord Injuries are something I admittedly knew very little about until recently. I have never met someone living with a spinal cord injury, so most of my understanding came from what I saw on TV and in movies. In shows like One Tree Hill or Degrassi, spinal cord injuries followed the same trajectory. A star athlete who suffered a tragic accident from a fight, a bad hit in a game, or even a school shooting had to learn to adjust to using a manual wheelchair and a life without sports. The experience following the injury always looked the same with the loss of motor and sensory function in the lower extremities but a complete function of the upper extremities. The characters typically suffered from depression and anger following the accident and had to find new meaning in their life. After learning about spinal cord injuries I wanted to see how closely this storyline mirrored real experiences by listening to a Tedx Talk by Janine Shepherd called "A broken body isn't a broken person." 

The reality of Spinal Cord Injuries is far more complex than how they are portrayed on tv. The experience of an individual with a spinal cord injury is not universal. Depending on where the damage is in the spine, how much of the spinal cord is affected, other pre-existing conditions, and even someone's mental health can affect how the injury presents in a client and what recovery can look like. 

Janine Shepherd's story begins the same as the stories I saw on tv growing up. Janine was a cross-country skier in Australia and an Olympic hopeful. While training one day, she was hit by a truck and suffered severe injuries, including breaking her neck and back in six places. It took Janine 10 days to regain consciousness following her accident, but that was only the first battle she had to face. She awoke to find multiple bones broken and the news that while her neck fracture did not affect her spinal cord, she had crushed her L1 vertebrae entirely and had paralysis from the waist down and needed surgery. During the surgery, they removed fragments of the vertebrae from her spinal cord and reconstructed L1 by fusing T12 and L2 together. Following surgery, she showed movement in some of her toes and was hopeful her Olympic dreams could remain intact. She was informed by her surgeons that this was not the case. She was diagnosed with partial paraplegia and was told she would have to wear a catheter for life, and if she ever walked again, it would be with assistive devices. 

For the next 6 months, she had to cope with what her life would look like following her accident. She was told of all the things she "could not do" with her injuries and was forced to adjust to the vast difference between Olympic-level activity and being essentially in an entire body cast viewing life through a mirror above her head while connecting to the other patients laying next to her without ever seeing them.  Although difficult, her time in the hospital allowed her to cope in a safe setting with people who were experiencing the same situation, but her life before the accident was harder to ignore upon returning home. She was constantly reminded of life before the accident, who she was, what she could do, and all of the things she could not do anymore. This understandably leads to depression in many individuals returning home following a spinal cord injury. 

After struggling for some time. she decided to give up her old dream of becoming an Olympic athlete to make room for new pursuits. Although scary, the uncertainty of what her life could now become was also freeing. Possibilities she never considered were now open for her as she began to reassess what roles, habits, and occupations she could find new meaning in. That is when she decided to fly. While still in a large cast and in a wheelchair, she took her first flying lesson. Within 18 months of leaving the spinal cord unit, she was a certified flying instructor at the same place she took her first class and during the Ted talk, she was ambulating without assistive devices.

There is still a lot to learn about spinal cord injuries, but Janine's story showed me that an individual's capabilities are not limited by their body. I always pitied the characters in the shows I saw, but I think pity can be dangerous, especially as a future occupational therapist. I will see individuals like Janine that have suffered unimaginable tragedy, but my pity and sadness for their experience do nothing to help them recover. Empathy is necessary, pity is not. There is great power in occupations and defining one's purpose. My job as an OT is not to get them back to what they were before because sometimes that isn't possible. My job is to inspire them could be now and work with them to engage in meaningful activities, even if they are new ones. 

If you want to listen to Janine's story here is the link: https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_shepherd_a_broken_body_isn_t_a_broken_person

References:

TEDx. (2012). Tedtalks: Janine Shepherd--a broken body isn't a broken person. TedxKD.