Daring to overcome fear

I consider myself to be a very mobile C6 quadriplegic and I attribute much of my mobility to my daring to cross unsafe lines and boundaries. I remember the first time after my accident when two lifters lifted me onto a therapy mat. My therapist got behind me and sat me up by literally forcing my body upright with brute force. My feet were stretched out in front of me on the mat. He held and steadied me for a moment and checked to see if I had passed out, I had not. There are two reasons one can pass out, first it is so traumatizing that one feints, the other reason is because the blood leaves your head from sitting up to fast. My therapist slowly began to relieve his stabilizing grasp so I could begin to feel my paralyzed trunk basically fail to hold me up as if it were a bowl of jelly with no bowl. The exercise was the first to begin learning how to balance my bowl of jelly (trunk) upright. It was very strange and scary and I do remember feeling as if I might pass out. More importantly, it was the moment I realized, "I am so paralyzed I can't sit up without falling uncontrollably down!" After about a week of daily practice for hours at a time I was able to sit there and keep myself upright by planting my hands in the right positions. The therapist was sitting there ready to catch me if I got daring and decided to try to move a hand 6 inches.

After learning to sit on the mat, the next step is to sit upright on the edge of the mat with your feet touching the floor, it is called long siting if I remember correctly. Now, this is much scarier because when your body and feet are up on the mat you only fall over on the mat, not far. When your butt is on the edge of the mat and your legs are going over the side with your feet touching the floor, it is a LONG way down if you fall; you are pretty much going to get hurt if you fall. This was one of the fist lines I crossed that many never do. It was really scary and quite difficult to learn how to balance and feel safe when you are literally on the edge of danger. I would compare it to sitting on the edge of a 15 foot wall for those who are not paralyzed, and add a 60 pound backpack packed top heavy (pull of gravity simulates no trunk muscles). Slipping and falling 15 feet is survivable but potentially serious if you land wrong. The consequence of not succeeding with long siting is never being able to transfer yourself to a wheelchair. This is huge because it implies you'll be reliant on people or special equipment to lift you a minimum of 4 times a day for the rest of your life.

Manipulating (sliding) your butt from the mat to the wheelchair is the next huge step. Add to log sitting keeping yourself balanced while letting go with one hand and shifting your weight around a lot. Very very scary and challenging for any C6 in their right mind.

There are several steps I have skipped that are difficult to do but not necessarily scary or dangerous, each step was critical and took a lot of time and practice. One is rolling from your back to your side (I still have to fight to simply roll from my back to my side, nightly). The next is uprighting yourself from your side. And the next is moving your legs around and sliding your butt from where you are laying (bed) over to the edge into the long sitting position.

I don't know what the real statistics are, but I would venture to guess that approximately 20% of the textbook C6s (without triceps) can independently transfer into/out of their wheelchair. I was young, daring, strong, and determined when I accomplished the seemingly impossible. One of the other reasons I believe that I succeeded was my competitive spirit. I saw a fellow quad do it and therefore knew I would succeed. The thing I didn't know until later is that his injury was C7 and that he had much more functionality than I did. I am glad I didn't know.

Daring to conquer the edge was the first of many scary challenges that enabled huge doors to open in this quads C6 adventure. Daring to try new and enabling things has been an essential key to making progress in my life. It has taken literally over a thousand tries to get good at some of them. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is not to give up too fast. There are unconquered challenges waiting to be conquered, most of them just take time and persistence.