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My name is Ian, and I live in Bowral, in Australia, a town about an hour and a half drive from Sydney. I am 80 years of age, a retired Australian Federal Police Officer. When I retired, I was involved in forensic scientific investigations specializing in firearms and ammunition as well as post-blast analysis. I was often called to give expert opinion evidence in court cases. I served 38 years with the police.
When I officially retired in 2008, my wife Diane and I moved from Canberra to Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. In 2019 we moved into a newly built house. It’s a single level home, with wide doorways, bigger rooms and things like that because we were getting older, and we wanted the home to be easy to live in as we both aged. Three weeks later I sustained a spinal cord injury. The landscaping on the house was new, and I noticed that there were some weeds coming up under the back fence of our yard. I was climbing over the fence, a two-rail timber fence of about 1.2 meters high, to pull the weeds, my foot slipped on the top rail, and I fell onto my head, fracturing my skull and 2C vertebrae. C3 was displaced, resulting in an incomplete spinal cord injury.
I was airlifted to a major trauma center in Sydney, where I had to wait 12 hours to undergo surgery because I was on blood thinners. The surgeons performed a spinal fusion using bone from my hip. There are two metal plates with screws in the back of my neck as well. I couldn’t move and I was completely paralyzed from the neck down.
After the surgeries, I stayed in the hospital for four weeks. While I was there, I started to regain movement in my arms and legs, but things were still shaky, and I had some spasticity, which still happens to this day. At the hospital, I participated in rehabilitation with physiotherapists and occupational therapists. I practiced walking using the parallel bars and did some therapy for my hands. I wasn’t able to do any sustained movement on my own, and I had an electric wheelchair in the hospital so I could get around. I still needed assistance to transfer in and out of a bed or to use the bathroom.
After four weeks, I had progressed enough that I was then a candidate to transfer to a specialty spinal cord injury rehabilitation hospital in Sydney, where I stayed for seven weeks.
First, I was given a total assessment as to my capabilities and underwent a psychological and physical evaluation. Then I was asked what my goals for rehabilitation were, and I crafted a plan together with my physiotherapists and OTs to achieve those goals. They were amazing. It is because of their endeavors and their dedication to me that helped me make rapid advancement. And I think my positive attitude helped as well. Psychologically, I knew I needed to remove myself from other patients in the hospital who saw their situation in a completely negative light. Even though I showed empathy and extended pastoral care, I knew that wasn’t the way to go. I wanted to advance and progress towards maximum independence. My refuge was the gym. I extended my rehabilitation by working out in the gym, which was kept open later just for me. The physios loved me because I was so self-motivated and achieving.
Soon, a walk around the corridor with my physio holding the support belt became walk around the block, still with someone hanging onto the belt. Then we tried the stairs inside the parallel bars, then stairs outside the parallel bars and then several flights of stairs. I also practiced getting up from the floor. Sometimes my clinician would take a video of me getting off the floor, and we would watch it together to figure out what I could do better and how to get up without aggravating my injury. There was also a lot of therapy around just breathing and filling your lungs. The whole group of us rehab patients would sing together once a week with one of the physios conducting us.
I should say that my original goals were to put my arms around my wife, get my driver’s license back, to use the computer and to walk. And later, to get back to clay target shooting.
When you have a spinal cord injury, in Australia, they take away your driver’s license (mandatory reporting). You have to pass a test to get it back, which later, I did. I wanted to get back to the computer because I’m the one that pays all the bills online and handle the family admin. When I first got home, I was a single finger typer, but now I’m a lot better. And obviously walking. That was a major one. And I wanted to do it without an assistive device.
When I was ready to leave the rehabilitation hospital, they offered me an electric wheelchair, not because I couldn’t walk, but they figured I could use it on longer walks so I could be out longer without being tired, but I refused it. Psychologically, I didn’t want to be dependent on it, and, I didn’t want to have to maintain it!
Today I can walk unassisted, but I sometimes use Nordic hiking poles to re-establish my walking rhythm if I want to go farther. I still have some spasticity in my legs, and sometimes my knees lock up at first, but once I get going, it’s better. My hands also have some spasticity, so I need to be careful with glasses of water and things like that.
Right after I got home, it was discovered that I had a spot on my lung. It was lung cancer, and I had to have surgery to have it removed. So, when I went to see a surgical specialist, I effectively exited the public trauma health system, which I was using throughout my spinal cord injury rehabilitation. I saw the specialist under private health insurance, which means I lost my public health benefits, so public health rehabilitation from that point ceased. The surgery was successful, and I went back to focusing on rehabilitation.
After I returned home, a physiotherapist from a specialist Spinal Outreach came about once every week at first, and then less so as I progressed. We would walk around the block together, and she would measure the distance I could walk and then see if I could walk further during the next visit. I used a walker at first. I had an additional 12 months of in-home rehabilitation, and the services were exceptional.
My physiotherapist happened also to be a published researcher, and she was wonderful. And I was absolutely delighted that she was willing to work with me to get back into clay target shooting. I had always been a pretty good target shooter, but after my injury, I wasn’t able to shoot. I had lost strength to pick up the gun, to hold and swing. Further, my neck was stiff, making it difficult to put my face to the stock. Well, Lyndal, this great physio, obtained a clearance from her bosses to come out and observe clay target shooting with me. She took some videos of me shooting, and we reviewed them to strategize on what I could do differently to be better, smoother and more accurate. It was really above and beyond, in my opinion, because she had to get special permission from her CEO to attend the shooting range
I did get my driver’s license back. The Christopher Reeve Foundation paid for the course of video game simulations and then a driver’s test, and it costs about $1,000. I was so grateful for the gesture; I donated that money to Spinal Research Australia.
Today, I spend a lot of time volunteering at the church doing bookings for their facilities, working at the local soup kitchen and generally just going out to have lunch with friends. I have resumed clay target shooting as a social activity – no competitions, yet. One of my goals at the moment is to be able to open a jar of pickles. But I’m still improving all the time, even now, five years later.
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As part of a grant to study how differences in acute care and rehabilitation length of stay affect outcomes for people with spinal cord injury in different countries, the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research has collected blog posts by people with SCI in different countries about their injuries and rehabilitation. In these posts, writers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and The Netherlands share reflections on their unique inpatient rehabilitation experiences, what worked, what they wanted more (or less) of in rehabilitation, what it was like going home, and how they are doing today. The grant is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (grant 90DPHF0012).