Life is what happens when you want things to stay the same. Despite knowing that change is inevitable, we are dumbfounded when reality hits us head on. The “that could never happen to me” mentality usually prevails over the sheer common sense that it could happen to anyone, and it happens often.
Two years ago, Shelley Mountjoy discovered the unpredictable nature of life in a car driven by her then-boyfriend when he presumably fell asleep and went off the road early one Virginia morning. She was wearing a seatbelt, but it snapped, causing Shelley’s tiny frame to slide down her seat just, barely missing a huge branch that would have collided with her skull. The force of the car crashing into the heavily forested area set off the airbags, breaking her boyfriend’s wrist and injuring Shelley’s spinal cord.
Although her boyfriend only sustained a minor injury, Shelley will never walk again. She spent the next year learning how to be self-reliant while her parents struggled to pay her enormous hospital fees in addition to college tuition.
One year after her accident, Shelley put on a brave face at VCU’s Monroe Park Campus, but in her quiet moments she’s tired and frustrated with having to prove herself to people with a negative attitude toward the disabled and dealing with Richmond’s unfavorable environment for the disabled.
Despite the negatives, Shelley still preferred living in Richmond and VCU’s handicap-accessible dorm rooms. It made her feel independent, and she often forgot about her physical state.
Although the chain of events may not be identical, what happened to Shelley could easily happen to anyone, which is precisely why we need to change our attitude about people with disabilities and make Richmond a better environment for them.
According to the University of Virginia’s health system Web site, “About 11,000 people sustain a spinal cord injury every year. About 243,000 people in the United States are living with a spinal cord injury.
“Fifty-three percent of all spinal cord injuries occur among young people between the ages of 16 and 30 years. The majority of spinal cord injury victims (82 percent) are male.”
For people with spinal cord injuries – quadriplegics or paraplegics – adjusting to the inability to use their limbs or walk is just one of the many hardships they must face in adapting to their new lives.
Getting ready in the morning, for example – a routine that typically takes thirty minutes to an hour – may take two to three hours. Going to the bathroom becomes a thirty-minute ordeal. If a delivery truck blocks your only means getting down from a curb or the only elevator in the building is broken, you are now late for work or class, and your day is ruined. Bedsores and kidney failure constantly test your health.
Eventually people adapt. Shelley is accustomed to the daily grind and rarely complains, but bosses, teachers, and other people who just don’t understand how different life becomes for the disabled make her want to scream or – even worse – give up.
In addition to dealing with frequent misconceptions, people living with spinal cord injuries in Richmond also have to adapt to the idea that they can’t do certain things or go to certain places. Yet who wants to be told that they can’t go somewhere or do something because of an injury that is beyond their control?
In Richmond many of the buildings, businesses, and galleries either don’t have a handicapped entrance or exit or they don’t have elevators and ramps. In addition to the architectural problems, Richmond’s brick sidewalks are uneven, and many of the sidewalk ramps are too steep for any sane person to attempt on wheels.
One of our major faults as humans is failing to look beyond ourselves to notice a frequently ignored problem before we fit into that category. We don’t care about Social Security and Medicare until we’re near our senior years. We don’t care about the war on drugs until someone is affected in our lives.We don’t care about terrorism until we are hit too close to home. Even critics of Christopher Reeve lambasted him for not caring about research to cure spinal cord injuries until he sustained one after a horseback riding accident.
While there is nothing wrong with searching for a possible cure with stem cell research, it is within our means to improve the quality of life for people who are still alive and want to enjoy it even if it means they have to enjoy it sitting down.
Celina Williams may be reached at willcn84@gmail.com