Living Life To The Fullest With A Spinal Cord Injury
On January 18, 2015 I was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident. I have used my injury to live life to the absolute fullest; along with educating society on what its like living with paralysis.
On October 26th, 2017, I will be hitting the road from Charlotte, North Carolina to Las Vegas, Nevada for World's Toughest Mudder. I want to make the most of my time during this trip, stopping at schools across the country and encouraging high school students to use the obstacles in their lives to help them live life to the fullest, along with meeting others that also use wheelchairs. My adventure isn't just a road trip and obstacle course race, but a way to influence people all over the country.
Living Life with a spinal cord injury & Wheel With Me Foundation
In addition to raising awareness about living life with a spinal cord injury, the ultimate goal of my travels is to fundraise money for The Wheel With Me Foundation. I have a goal of $100,000 dollars. There are only 17,000 new spinal cord injury cases each year. That number is accumulative. These patients are not getting better. Paralysis doesn't only affect your motor function in your legs. You lose all bowel/bladder control; meaning you all but turn into an over grown toddler.
Since a spinal cord injury happens abruptly, there is no gradual transition into paralysis. It's overwhelming and frustrating. A lot of the opinions we are fed when initially injured stick with us throughout our trials and errors of life. The Wheel With Me Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit, established in May 2016, dedicated to building a transitional home for spinal cord injury patients to help integrate them back into an independent society by teaching patients how to live life with this injury. We plan on an integration into society that starts immediately after in-patient rehabilitation. Health insurance covers a rehab stay long enough to teach you how to "exist" in the community, but Wheel With Me focuses on teaching you how to "live" in the community.
