Recent estimates in the United States indicate that there are between 250,000 – 400,000 people living with some type of spinal cord injury (SCI) or disorder that significantly affects their life activities. Over 13,000 more people in the U.S. alone sustain injuries every year. That means that every 41 minutes, someone new sustains a spinal cord injury. More than half of those who are injured are between 16 and 30 years old. Vehicular accidents cause 47.5% of these spinal cord injuries. 13.8% are the result of violence and 22.9% are the result of falls. Sports injuries account for 8.9% of these injuries. 79.6% of SCI individuals are male and approximately half are married at time of injury. On a more positive note, the majority (90%) of SCI individuals survive and live near-normal life spans.

You might say my injury fits the bill. Yes, I’m a stat. Before I tell you about what happened to me, I’d like to share some background information that might be helpful.

What is the spinal cord?

The human spinal cord is a bundle of nerve cells and fibers approximately 17 inches long that extends from the brain to the lower back. It connects your brain with your muscles, skin and internal organs. Similar to a telephone line, it relays millions of messages from the brain to a specific body part. Nerve fibers pass between vertebrae and each carries a specific messages to different parts of the body.

I believe the spinal cord is the body’s superhighway for transmitting information between the brain and the nerves that lead to muscles, skin, internal organs and glands. The cord is protected by the backbone, which is made up of 33 individual vertebrae. These vertebrae have different names depending on their location. There are:

7 cervical vertebrae located in the neck
12 thoracic vertebrae in the upper back
5 lumbar vertebrae in the lower back
5 fused sacral vertebrae in the hip area
4 fused vertebrae in the coccyx (tailbone)

Injury to the spinal cord disrupts movement, sensation and function. Paraplegia results from injury to the lower part of the spinal cord, causing paralysis of the lower part of the body. Quadriplegia (sometimes called tetraplegia) results from injury to the spinal cord in the cervical neck area causing paralysis to the lower body, upper body and arms. “Quad” means “four” so every quadriplegic has some degree of impairment in each of the four limbs. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all four limbs are paralyzed. Every year, approximately 43% of SCI is paraplegia and 57% is quadriplegia.

When a person receives an SCI, the communication between the brain and other parts of the body is disrupted and messages no longer flow past the damaged area. The extent of the communication breakdown is dependent on both the severity and location of the injury. SCI disrupts the flow along the superhighway.

SCI can occur at any level of the spinal cord, and the level of the injury will dictate which bodily functions are altered or lost. Damage to the spinal cord can cause changes in movement, feeling and other bodily functions. How many changes there are depends on where the spinal cord was injured and how severely the spinal cord was injured. The main problem with SCI is that the connection between the brain and the parts of the body below the injury is impaired. A spinal cord injury is named for the lowest level of the spinal cord that still functions the way it did before injury.

Most spinal injuries damage both upper motor neurons (UMNs) and lower motor neurons (LMNs). A complete injury cuts or squeezes all the UMNs running down the spinal cord. In a UMN injury, control by the brain no longer exists because messages from the brain can’t get through the point of injury. No, that doesn’t mean there is brain damage; it means the brain and the body no longer have the ability to share information and communicate. The LMNs act by themselves, causing reflexes without limit. LMN injuries are a different story. This kind of injury is found, for the most part, at the lower tip of the spinal cord, or the cauda equina.

How does recovery work?

Immediately after a spinal cord injury, the spinal cord stops doing its job for a period of time. This is called “spinal shock.” The return of reflexes below the level of injury marks the end of spinal shock. At this time, a doctor can determine if the injury is complete or incomplete. If the injury is incomplete, some feelings and movement may come back.

Rehabilitation begins immediately. The SCI individual will be instructed in strengthening exercises, new styles of movement, and the use of special equipment like cool, sexy manual wheelchairs and not so sexy shower benches. If additional recovery of feeling or movement does not occur, a rehabilitation team will help the individual develop new goals. Working with these folks pretty much sucks but it has tremendous benefits.

Thanks for asking. On a sunny Saturday morning in early November of 1990, after finishing a beach volleyball game with a Navy buddy, I waded out into the waters of Pensacola Beach, Florida, to rinse sand off my body and go for a swim. As a wave came towards the shoreline, I dove under it. The wave broke a bit early, pushed my head down and caused a compression fracture in my neck. My body just wasn’t strong enough to absorb the downward force of the wave and the violent movement of my body hitting the sandy bottom. I broke my neck.

Have you ever bumped you elbow and felt that pins and needles feeling shoot through your arm? Well, that’s what happened to me except the weird pins and needles feeling passed through my entire body. And it didn’t go away until most of the movement had left my body. I never had even an ounce of pain.

The next few minutes seemed like a lifetime. I remained conscious but was floating upside down unable to move much more than my shoulders and neck. While the safety of the beach and the availability of fresh air was only a few yards away, it might as well have been somewhere over the horizon. I couldn’t move nor could I swim towards shore. I was barely able to lift my head for small breaths of air and was at the hopeful mercy of the waves to push me to safety.

When my friends realized I wasn’t around, my body had washed up on the beach. They immediately knew something was wrong. You might say the sight of a 6’2” physically fit, tanned guy in board shorts lying still in the tide wash would be enough to sound an alarm. My friends called for help. I was lucky that they didn’t try to move me as this might have caused more damage to my spinal cord.

After a Life Flight to Pensacola Baptist Hospital and a series of tests and MRIs, the ER doctor told me I had broken C6 and C7. I was now an incomplete quadriplegic (yes, I still have decent feeling but no movement below my level of injury). He explained that I would need a manual wheelchair from that day forward and I would be able to live a full and complete life - as independently as I chose - following a period of spinal cord injury rehabilitation and recovery.

While the injury marked the end of my Navy career, it opened many new doors for me. I’d be happy to tell you a bit more about what happened in the days, months and years after a halo cast was put in place, my tan faded and the bones in my neck healed. Just ask, OK?

 Some useful SCI Links…

Paralyzed Veterans of America                

New England Chapter PVA           

Veterans Administration                              

Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation     

Miami Project to Cure Paralysis                  

The Travis Roy Foundation                       

The Shepherd Center                                 

Craig Hospital                                          

“Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.”

- Christopher Reeve