If you live with a spinal cord injury (SCI) and navigate the unpredictable waters of chronic illness, you already know the invisible weight we carry every single day. When your body operates under a completely different set of rules, "being well" becomes a full-time job. It is an active, ongoing, and often exhausting pursuit. You wake …
The skin is closed. To anyone else, the battle looks won. The VAC pump is finally off, and there is a natural temptation to think you can finally jump straight back into normal life. But anyone who has ever survived a deep pressure ulcer knows the terrifying truth: closed skin does not mean fully healed tissue. Even …
September is Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month. Since 2007, a rare neurological illness called neuro mystica has left me paralysed from the T5 level and visually impaired. But numbers and medical charts only tell a tiny fraction of the story. To me, disability is the exhausting mental battle of having a mind that wants to …
Continue reading Spinal Cordially Invited into My Reality: Learning to Love the Body I’m In
Starting over is a skill you learn when life changes in a single second. My first restart began in a hospital bed in 2007, following a diagnosis of a rare illness called Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO), which caused my spinal cord injury, paralysis, and visual impairment. At the time, I thought that was the only time …
