Memories of the Spinal Unit. A Time of Tragedy and Hope

In the wee small hours you would hear them, crying.

They were the tears of those whose lives had been turned upside down, struggling to comprehend how what happened could have happened to them? The nurses on duty would leave them be. This was a private time, a time of personal and necessary grieving for the people they once were, and there was nothing anybody could say or do to make it better.

Daytime it was the turn of relatives and friends to grieve. I would watch and listen to them crying at bedsides, unable and unwilling to accept that this person they loved and cared for would never be the same. These tears and this grieving was different. It was the grieving of the able bodied for the disabled, tears for sons and daughters and, in the case of partners, over relationships forever changed as a result of a freak accident that could happen to anyone but which had happened to someone they loved.

Scott comes over to my bed on my second night in the unit and asks me how I’m doing. I tell him I’m doing okay, not too bad and all that, then tentatively asking him the same. He can’t complain, he says, before introducing himself. As we shake hands, he comments that it must be terrible having to wear that thing on my head. He’s referring to my Halo, the gruesome looking cage-like apparatus surrounding my…