Spinal Cord Iinjury
When I first moved in with my parents I was really excited to find out that they still have a support group at the hospital where I did my rehab after the accident. I remember it was mandatory when I was staying at the hospital but I do believe that I was going to be in the chair forever, I swear I was going to get back up and walk around so I didn't think I needed to go and in fact, I didn't think I needed to learn any of that stuff they wanted to teach me so why bother? I was so in denial! Now that it's a couple of years down the road I'm really excited to get back to the support group, or do I have a lot of questions. There was a couple of setbacks, I didn't have a caregiver at first so my mom did all of my care and then my aunt decided to send me to the independent living house since I didn't pay attention to much while I was going through rehab after being out of the hospital I realized it was pretty real. I've always been really shy in crowds and I really tried to participate as much as I could but for some reason, my mind just goes blank when somebody asked me a question. I thought maybe if I kept going I would get better at it and I think I did a little.
You are not alone in this journey...
When I moved to Santa Cruz in 2008 I was kind of sad to find out that there was no support group so I was talking to the guy who schedules the appointments and he said they used to have one but nobody attended it but he would like to start one if I was game. I was really nervous, I just wanted to attend one I didn't want to facilitate it but I brought it up and I in a new town and I don't want anybody to think I can't do it so I said okay. He talked to a couple of therapists and we found somebody to come in every month and write notes, we decided to try once a month. I got to know Roger pretty good and he is such a sweet man! Whatever I needed my chair fixed or had a problem with the vendor he would jump in and help me out, everybody has a lot of respect for Roger and he deserves it. It started out really exciting and I thought maybe it was going to make it when it was holidays and there was a lot of food people would come but one by one they stop showing up until we just had to finally say it's not going to work right now but we swore we will try again when the time is right.
Years later I was talking to the CCI chapter leader for this area and I asked her if by any chance they had any CCI puppy play dates in this area.
A couple of years later we decided to try it again, maybe it will work better in the summer it was worth a try.
It's not about the destination, it's about the journey...
