The Daily Hailey

Brady and I have been watching House again. We watched it years ago, and as my anxiety mounted over those years, shows like that left me too stressed out to sleep. The fact that we can easily watch it now says one of two things. Either my mental health is perfect (HA!) and I can more easily separate from that stuff. Or it means our life has been traumatic enough that the stuff on tv doesn’t even come close to our reality. (ding ding ding!) Lol! Feeling a little dark today, pardon me.

Since all of our hospital stuff and our new medical knowledge, medical shows are more enjoyable. I’m not saying they’re realistic, but definitely easier to predict. Its actually really funny how often someone will have some weird symptom and we can pinpoint the direction the show is moving in. Apparently everyone who twitches has a neurological condition, everyone at one point or another will cough up blood, and no one, EVER, will have lupus, though they consider it for absolutely every case.

We giggle.

The other day I had a good laugh over an episode opening scene. A female patient had come in with spontaneous paraplegia. From the waist down, she had lost all feeling and movement. Then someone called the doctor into her room urgently with a discovery. They proceeded to stab her knee with a needle, and her leg twitched.

Everyone was agast! WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?!?!

And Dr. House, looking very serious, says “It means she’s not paralyzed.”

And we paused the show and had a GOOD laugh! Not because we think anyone is stupid, but because it was just so funny to see a doctor on a medical show NOT KNOW what paralysis is!!

This has motivated me to share a lesson with you guys! You might already have pieced it together over the last year, but in case you didn’t, I’m going to give you some info that I also probably wouldn’t know if not faced with what we’ve experienced in the world of paraplegia.

A complete spinal cord injury (SCI) means that the spinal cord has been severed. To my understanding, that leaves a person without ANY feeling or ANY function below their height of injury.

However…

An incomplete spinal cord injury does exist! This is what Brady has 🙂 It means that his spinal cord remains in tact. In Brady’s case, his tumour had eaten away some of his right spinal cord. By removing the tumour, a piece of his spinal cord went with it. But just a piece. With that, Brady’s nerves were badly damaged in his surgery. Not because of bad surgical work, but because they just had to be. NONE of them were severed! This is a really big deal, and a huge win for him!

While Brady has been branded with the lovely title of “permanently paralyzed,” his paralysis is NOT a completely numb thing.

If you stab Brady’s knee with a needle, it will twitch.

If Brady’s leg has an itch, it twitches like crazy.

If Brady’s leg has rain fall on it, it twitches.

And I can promise you he is indeed paralyzed.

Thats really all I have to say. Paralysis doesn’t mean he is numb. Its even defined as such. Paralysis refers to “the loss of ability to move (and sometimes to feel) in part or most of the body.” It specifies “in part.” Also only sometimes does it affect the feeling. Its a very wide definition. It can be very simply defined as a problem moving the body, due to disease or injury.

A paraplegic is someone who has full or partial paralysis of the legs and lower body.

A quadriplegic is someone who has full or partial paralysis including both arms and both legs.

Thats really all I wanted to say. There is such a HUGE amount of information out there, and I know we wouldn’t know the tip of the iceberg having not lived through it ourselves. I know how hard our close people work to really know about SCIs and paraplegia and wheelchair usage and accessibility and all that good stuff. So please, if you have a question, ask! Don’t feel silly 🙂 We would LOVE to educate the people who follow along and who want to know!

I’m closing the blog off by stealing a bit from an old blog, because I think it ties it all in.

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The level, or the ‘”height of injury.” This is labelling the highest post of his spine that was affected by his injury. There are four sections of the spine. The upper back is the cervical spine (C), ribs are thoracic (T), lower is lumbar (L), and the very lowest is sacral (S). From the section of spine, then, its counted by vertebrae. Brady’s tumour affected his T7-T11 vertebrae, but the surgery began at T6.

The height of Brady’s injury is T6.

Lastly, SCIs are either complete or incomplete. Believe it or not, complete is worse. “Complete” means the spinal cord was fully severed at the height of injury. Brady is fortunate to have an incomplete injury, meaning that he still has nerve function between his brain and the part of his body below the injury.

All of this being said, in the medical world, Brady’s SCI is a T6 incomplete.

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Boom. Educated.

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Ask us questions 💜 We are SO happy to talk.