The W Word

The W word is walk. Lying in a hospital bed looking at my useless, motionless and senseless legs I wondered whether it was possible to even contemplate the idea that I might walk in some way shape or form. I was told that most of the change in the status of a spinal cord injury happened in the first three months. In the first three months there were few changes in the status of my legs. At the end of that time I basically had decided that I would never regain any functionality in my legs and that I would never walk again.

Walk became the W word, the word that you dared not utter or even contemplate. There was a doctor on the ward whose gait was clearly abnormal. I asked him why and he told me that he too had a spinal cord injury, very severe, and had been confined to a wheelchair. Eventually he regained sufficient function to walk. It was not a normal walk and it may well have involved a great deal of effort and pain. He asked me whether it was a good idea to tell the patients that he had similar injuries. I considered the question carefully and I never gave him an answer. I knew that most of the people on that ward would never recover significant function. The odds were against them and also against me. Is it a good idea to hold out the possibility of recovery knowing how long the odds are. I never gave him an answer and to this day I cannot say what a good answer is.

For a long time walk remained a word that I did not consider. Three or four months ago, as I have outlined in other entries, I began to regained some function. My legs are still very weak and most of the movement that I have is really not muscles in the leg but in the abdomen. I have no feeling and no movement below the level of the knee. However my therapist believes that there is sufficient movement to try to teach me, using a large number of braces, crutches and other aides to be able to walk on my own.

She said that she has over a period of ten years taught seven people with similar injuries to mine how to walk under these conditions. Only one is still walking. The others all decided that walking with my level of injury is a huge amount of work compared to the ease of getting around in a wheelchair. I know that there will be a lot of work, probably a lot of pain, and in the end getting around in a wheelchair will be easier in the short term and maybe the long term. This does not mean that I will not give walking all that I have.

Next week I will be measured for braces. Tomorrow I will go into a group called Pushing Boundaries to start an exercise program. I will say more about Pushing Boundaries in a later post. I have no idea what the therapy and training with braces will involve. I do not even know how long it will take to build the braces and when I can start. The only thing I do know is that walk is now a word that I'm willing to utter and willing to attempt.