I wish I could help, but I haven’t any experience with the Texas Cath. Your best bets are either to ask a doctor/nurse, or perhaps you can find someone with better advice on the Apparelyzed Forums. There’s lots of people there who probably have experience with your husband’s situation. Best of luck!

I thought this might be something you would be interested in and could help spread the word about this new charity. Thanks.

Authenticity like that can be a powerful force for recovery, I believe. We tend to have little power over anything unspeakable.

(Tech note: wish I could subscribe to comments, too, not just posts!)

PS: Not sure if you have seen this … http://www.thehealin.....ournal.htm

I am reminded of John Berryman, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, contemporary and an alcoholic, who on arrival at Alcoholics Anonymous wrote as follows: “How can I ripped open for all the world to see survive?”

His words have helped many find ways to live with their vulnerability, though he never found one for himself. Having written them, he committed suicide. He couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable. How wonderful it is that you can.

N.

Prelude – About the Injury
Details on My Injury and Surgery

As to what caused the fall, I believe it was a combination of being tired and a momentary drop in blood pressure (one side of my family tree has historically low blood pressure), coupled with me tripping and falling in just such a way that I landed right where I didn’t want to. As I say, that’s a bit of a guess – I don’t recall the actual fall or the few minutes thereafter. It seems to me to have been the unfortunate perfect storm. The precise injury could happen to anybody that received significant trauma to the back of the neck – it takes a lot of force to snap a vertebra clear out of the spinal column.

Unfortunately, as to how to avoid it, I don’t know that it’s entirely predictable. Accidents do happen when we least expect them, and I met a man in his late 40′s/early 50′s in rehab who had the exact same mechanism of injury as me. Being cautious is important, but at the same time we can’t all walk around with a bubble around us every minute of the day. Car accidents are common, and surgery/anaesthesia-related complications are not as common, but more than I would have expected. Everything we do in life carries some amount of risk, and I would think the best we can do is attempt to minimize those risks where we can.

As to the bathroom, I’m loathe to talk about it due to the personal nature of it. SCI patients run the gamut from a complete lack of control (i.e., having bowel and bladder accidents uncontrollably) to complete, normal function. It depends entirely upon the individual, and sometimes function returns after years of being injured. Some SCI people must wear a Texas/condom catheter with a leg bag 24×7 due to leakage, others wear nothing. Some can control bowel and bladder function strictly using muscles, others must use complex regimens involving digital manipulation and stimulation. I’m much closer to normal functionality than abnormal, and I’ve been getting more normal over time, but it’s still a process and I’m not yet completely “normal” in the able-bodied sense. I’ll leave it at that for now. Perhaps when I get a bit more comfortable with all of this, I’ll share more details. I will say that bowel and bladder management are a huge issue for all people with SCI, and it is without a doubt the single most frustrating issue.

During a group session in the hospital, the psychiatrist leading the session indicated she had read a survey of long-term spinal cord injured individuals, and they ranked normal bowel and bladder function ABOVE walking for what they wish they could have back.

Good luck with your recovery – continue to stay strong. In the future you will be inspiring your patients to keep battling!