Managing Your Body – Life with a Spinal Cord Injury

A spinal cord injury alters your life in ways you could never imagine. Everything and everyone in your life becomes derailed, scattered and confused. Life with a SCI presents a whole new set of challenges for you, your family, friends, co-workers and community. Managing your body – what is essentially a different body – is one of those challenges.

In my experience, the most difficult part of rebuilding life post-SCI trauma is learning to manage the barrage of new medical information, clinical complications, physiological education and dramatic psychological and emotional swings.

I found the best thing to do is “control the controllables.” Personal self-care rules the beginning and end of each day for me, along with lots of pit stops in between. There are two different ways that I think about managing my body:

1. Managing functions that used to be second nature (like urinating and moving my bowels)
2. Managing the spasms and pain my body now experiences

There is much to learn on this journey of self discovery and recovery. I hope the links below help point you in a direction of healing and may you find peace and liberation in the process.

Please feel free to reach out – you can Ask Aaron and/or leave a comment below.

Best in Health,

Aaron

To learn more about managing your body, you can find information in the following links:

• Managing My Neurogenic Bladder
• How I Manage My Neurogenic Bowels
• How to Safely Catheterize in a Public Restroom | Ask Aaron
• Spasticity & Spasms: Part 1 – Insight Into My Spastic Paralysis
• Spasticity & Spasms: Part 2 – How I Manage My Possessed Body
• Spinal Cord Injuries and Urological Issues
• Autonomic Dysreflexia: A Dangerous Secondary Complication of Spinal Cord Injury
• Temperature Roller Coaster: The Ups and Downs of Thermoregulation
• Nerve Pain | Spinal Cord Injury

Shield HealthCare | Stronger with Shield