Relearning Everything: Spinal Cord Injury Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe living with a spinal cord injury, from the first days on the ward to forty years of transfers. Some injuries came from falls, diving, a collapsed rugby scrum, a tram rail, a gunshot or a trampoline; others from a spinal tumour, transverse myelitis or cauda equina syndrome. The writers include a motorbike dispatch rider, a fifth-grade teacher, an emergency room nurse, a dancer, a roofer telling three children, a wife, a mother and a daughter who became her father's carer, from Cork to Karachi and Tulsa to Trondheim. They write about bowel and bladder routines, a pressure sore that took five months to close, autonomic dysreflexia, burning pain below the injury, an implanted pump for spasms, tendon transfers, a day in an exoskeleton, a stimulation study and a stem cell clinic abroad that took one man's savings. Daily life runs through it: driving again, dating apps, pregnancy, airports, a service dog, carers in the bathroom each morning, insurance forms and going back to work. A few now walk short distances with a frame; most describe adapting rather than recovering. Several describe guilt, low years spent saying they were fine and marriages that nearly ended, and few describe a clean ending.

Who it's for

For people newly living with a spinal cord injury or many years into it, and for the partners, parents, children and carers who are learning alongside them.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 274 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.