Disability confidential. Informing. Empowering. Agitating.
Life After Paralysis is a blog that represents a variety of paralysis community members. It is a place for open conversation about the issues and the interests of people living with paralysis, their family, friends, caregivers, and the professionals that serve them.
Comments are welcome!
The opinions expressed in these blogs are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
(Find out more about the contributors at www.ChristopherReeve.org/contributors.)
Posted by
CandaceThursday, February 28, 2013
Has anyone ever said to you, now just take a breath, breathe, relax? Why would someone tell you to breathe to relax? Because our breath is all mighty and powerful when it comes to relaxing us, changing our energy, our brain chemistry, our health, our outlook and our hearts. And that’s just mentioning only a few advantages to breathing.
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Posted by
CandaceThursday, February 28, 2013
I don’t know about y’all with spinal cord injuries, but for me when I dream, half the time I am using a wheelchair and half the time I am walking, running, skipping and jumping, no wheelchair in sight. Well maybe not exactly half the time and somehow I know you get my meaning that in my dreams, I’m shifting, changing with effortless ease from walking to rolling from rolling to walking.
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I lifted that phrase – a cliché, really – from a just-published article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Long Lines Lead to Rise of Wheelchair ‘Miracles.’” You probably know the general story – lazy, rude, conniving travelers with no disability whatsoever will ask for wheelchair assistance at the airport to get them quickly through security and on to the plane first, often finding a choice seat before the other poor schlumps climb aboard. When the plane arrives at its destination, all of a sudden these helpless souls are just fine and need no assistance so they don’t have to wait and get off the plane last. They are “miracle” passengers. Read More
This past weekend was the first ever adaptive ski event at
Great Bear Recreational Park in Sioux Falls, SD and to say it was an absolute blast is an understatement! For this being Great Bear’s first time ever doing an adaptive ski event they did a wonderful job. The Great Bear staff and volunteers were great in their training and it showed when it came time for us to ski.
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I love almost everything about my little house, from the frictionless slate floors to the low sunny windows, to the roomy, curbless roll-in shower to the fully accessible kitchen where I can make a complete Thanksgiving meal on my own. If I could just pick it up and transport it to another neighborhood, I'd be over the moon happy.
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We celebrate many types of anniversaries in our lives, and some of us are lucky enough to share some anniversaries that are rather unique. For me, and many of my friends, the date of a spinal cord injury that relegated us to life in a wheelchair is an annual event that is difficult to forget even if we should want to.
This year marks 25 years since that cold January day when I found myself gasping for air and unable to move at the base of a ski lift tower that had proved to be an immovable object when I slid into it.
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"As the blur of the first hours, days or weeks
Turns into a realization that freedom is gone forever,
The bed becomes a prison in its own small world.
The ministering hands become symbols of helplessness
In a world of the independent.
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At 42, life was going great.
Healthy, happy, active, a parent of two beautiful teenage daughters, financially secure and seemingly invincible, I wasn’t worried about what tomorrow might bring. But, in a split second on a snowy ski slope, my life changed forever. Suddenly I was quadriplegic and had -- like about 10,000 other people every year -- no choice but to learn how to live with the consuming changes a spinal cord injury brings. Read More
People in wheelchairs learn to get old early, or at least I did. What I mean by this is that many of the issues that wheelchair users face at any juncture in their lives – from bodily failures and adjustments to often being patronized and treated as a lesser – are the same our senior citizens face. I know this. I am verging on senior citizenship myself and can see the parallels everywhere. Read More
Posted by
CandaceTuesday, February 05, 2013
I’m spending this week in Sun Valley Idaho with the beautiful people. Not only do I speak of the towns folk in this vigorous mountain hamlet clothe in their ensembles of fur coats layered over distressed rhinestone studded jeans pasted over slender legs marching in the latest version of winter boot. The people here are beyond a doubt healthy and fit, they make a point to recreate often in the great outdoors, come winter or summer, just as movie stars Clark Gable and Lucille Ball did in days of old. Sun Valley takes play to a higher ground!
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