Still Me by Christopher Reeve

such a strange and unpredictable thing, and people’s responses are so unique, that two individuals with the same injury can have entirely different results. I heard about two patients in the same room at the same hospital with the same injury. One ended up walking, the other did not. The person relating the story concluded that one patient had more faith than the other. It’s tempting to believe that, and I do think a positive attitude helps tremendously. But I don’t believe that faith alone can put a broken spinal cord back together again.

    Dr. Jane and Dana checking on me a few hours after the operation.
    Dr. Jane is a very kind man, practically central casting’s idea of a doctor. He’s in his sixties and sort of stocky, with a gentle face, warm and modest about his skills. And he was extremely caring, but perhaps he tried to protect me too much.
    I got the feeling that he so wanted me to be well, to be better off than I was, that whenever he came to talk to me after the operation, he would sugarcoat the situation a bit. He said that I was incomplete, that I would probably descend a couple of levels. He said there was a very good chance I could get off the vent, because the phrenic nerve (which controls the impulse to breathe) was intact and the diaphragm hadn’t been damaged. I felt uplifted by all this, especially when he told me that I only had a hemorrhage in my spinal column at C2, just in the left half of the spine. There was swelling, which was to be expected, down to the C6–C7 level, but as it went down and the hemorrhage cleared up, I could get significant return of sensation and function.
    A C2 incomplete means that the spinal cord is still intact, and one might have more recovery over time. Complete means there will be no further recovery because the spinal cord has been transected or so badly damaged that there is no hope for repair. At C2 you can move your head and you can talk; at C3 you can breathe a little bit; at C4 you can breathe normally; at C5 you gain some use of your arms; at C6 you might begin to get use of your hands. So when someone injures their spinal cord, the first question is: What level? Because this will give you an idea what their future is. You will know what kind of chair they’re going to be in, whether they’re going to be on a vent or not. When I heard about Travis Roy, the Boston University hockey player who injured his spinal cord in a game, my first question was: What level? And when I heard that he was a C4, I thought: Great, he’s going to breathe. The definition of complete and incomplete had changed at a medical convention in 1992. Until then, if your spinal cord wasn’t severed, you were considered incomplete. But since the convention a spinal cord injury is only termed incomplete if the patient has sensation at the very base of the spine. I had none.
    Nevertheless, Dr. Jane continued to see the glass as at least half full. He kept coming into my room with good news. “You’re doing great. You’re going to get more recovery. You’ll get off the respirator. You’ve got some movement in your trapezius now. It won’t be long before you’ll get deltoids, and then you’ll be using your arms.” And so forth. I began to suspect that Dr. Jane simply wanted us both to feel better.
    Then one night an intern came in, to check on me. We got to talking and I asked, “So what about this bleeding that’s been in my spine? After that goes down, there’ll be a return of sensation, right?” And she said, “You don’t have any bleeding in your cord. You hardly bled at all.” I was shocked and upset. But when I questioned Dr. Jane the next day, he was annoyed. “Are you going to listen to an intern, or are you going to listen to me?”
    My spirits during those days were on a roller coaster ride. There were moments when I would feel so grateful—when a friend would come a long