Trouble with colds and wheelchairs

I started this blog with the intentions of helping those better understand what life for someone with paralysis is, or at least have a better understanding of what my life is. That being said I think a huge misconception (one that I had before the wheels) is that if you are paralyzed it only means your legs don't work, but that is far from the truth. I believe I have touched on this before in other blogs but what I don't think many realize is the tiny things that have changed for me.

For instance last week I had (still have) a sinus infection and with that comes the sore throat, coughing, stuffy nose, and so on. Let's start with coughing, coughing is no big deal right? Well when less than half of your abs work coughing becomes a much bigger deal. See since my "level of injury is T8" that means that all muscles below my belly button don't work and the ones above my belly button are slightly weakened as well. So when I go to cough I can't get the ab contraction like everyone else to give a good solid cough. Mine all sound like a 2 year old coughed and since my abs don't work other muscles have to take their place like my neck muscles. This causes a whole new problem for me because after a week of coughing those muscles are pretty dang sore. I know most of you probably didn't even realize how much of a role your abs played in coughing. It is really incredible how important muscles that you would think have nothing to do with certain action really are.

Now on to probably the most annoying part of being sick and paralyzed is not being able to blow my nose. I am not sure if this happens to everyone but for some reason I can't put the force into blowing my nose. Any time I try to blow as hard as I can and nothing will ever come out, and sometimes it even causes me to get light headed because I blow so hard. So for the past 6 years anytime I have had a stuffy nose I just had to tough it out. For the same reasons as the coughing I can't blow my nose because of the lack of abs that I have. Sometime it can be, who am I kidding it is always incredibly frustrating to be 23 years old and unable to blow my nose. But this is my life...

I guess I am writing this not just so people can have the knowledge to know just how life changing becoming paralyzed is but also why it is so frustrating. Why we get angry and lash out at those who we love or even begin to hate who we may hold responsible for us becoming paralyzed. It is just so much to deal with and most of the time it is the little things that we can no longer do that hurts the most. Like no one told me I would no longer be able to blow my nose it was something I figured out years after the accident when I got sick. In all this is a hard life to adjust to so just give us some grace most of the time we come around and stop being so angry at the world.