I feel gutted for IL4 especially as there but for the grace of God go I.
I'm lucky in that I avoided a severing spinal cord injury, but I sustained compression fractures to C4, C5, T4, and T5.
I've been under sustained stress for 3 years with maybe 2 full nights sleep, one of my kids has been hospitalised 16 times with severe asthma including two trips to ICU where we really thought he'd die. We nearly lost the house twice because TerraNet incorrectly loaded someone else's title against our house so financial institutions thought we we're over commited by about 120%. It took $100,000 to sort out.
Then we had Alex which just about finished me off. Most of you guys think Down Syndrome is a joke. It is in fact a tight rope. Alex's DNA is fucked and the instructions it gives his body as he grows can severely impact on his quality of life because it can just screw everything up from time to time. One day he could be as good as he'll be. The next we may find that large chunks of his brain have become aganglionic (dead neurons and ganglions) and he's now a vegetable. Just like that. It probably won't happen, but there are other aspects to this syndrome, like bowel that doesn't work properly, poor muscle tone, intense emotional attachments, and the fact that we get fucking stared at everywhere we go, including by people who see us daily.
I've been in hospital twice this year after contracting Influenza twice. Not the I feel a bit manky so I'll stay home and play computer games flu, but the one that says, RIGHT I'm gonna kill you if I can.
I found out the same day that IL4 had his accident that there's reason for a bunch of things that have made it hard to develop a career, maintain relationships with people including my family, and to maintain perspective throughout stressful times.
Your thoracic spine carries a lot of nerves involved in Autonomic nervous system function. That's the control mechanism for you smooth muscles like your heart and governs things like blood pressure and heart rate and endochrine function. When I get really sick, like a bad virus, my blood pressure has been dropping right off and heart rate has been staying the same. Every investigation I've had looks at my family history and says it must be cardiac. It isn't. My Cholesterol is 2.8, my resting pulse is 78 and ECG's are better than they should be. Not bad for 40. My "attacks" (I've had more than two, including a bunch of episodes while training at the Gym) look like someone going vaso-vagal or bleeding out internally from a ruptured aorta.
I may have a thing called autonomic dysreflexia which is damage to the sympathetic nervous system. Except the symptoms I have are half that and half looking like damage to the parasympathetic nervous system which indicates a measure of SCI or spinal cord injury, probably just from the cord being irritated enough by the reconfiguration of the vertebrae I damaged to swell slightly. Other effects include an increase in sweating and increased irritability or a sensation of anxiety.
I've seen people look at how much I sweat with little apparent effort and can see that, "eewww, disgusting" look in their eyes. I have to fight the urge to over react in a negative fashion to little things like constructive critcism or someone changing the rules mid-stream. I was naturally like that anyway. It's just 20 times worse.
At least I know why I'm a grumpy fuckwit now.
John (IL4) faces a struggle that is going to include facets of what I've talked about. He is very lucky (as much as you can be) to have broken his spine at T6. He won't need a respirator if all goes to plan.
What I want you all to think about is that he may not react how you expect him to. I'm like a hormonal teenager at the best of times, and John will have to deal with those issues as well as all the personal issues that he will face due to loss of mobility, inability to toilet, and the complications like osteoprosis that will start to mount as he gets older. It is worse that he is an RN. He knows how this goes. If you talk to him and have a bad experience don't take it personally. Don't tell him to stay positive either as sometimes that choice will be out of his control.
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Originally Posted by TonyB
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