Jamie Polk, Stoke Mandeville Spinal Research Ambassador, shares his top tips, and bugbears, on living with spinal cord injury for Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Day 2022

How spinal cord injury affects my daily activity or routine

 “The biggest effect my spinal injury has on my daily routine is the lack of spontaneity. I can’t just decide to do this or that, everything needs to be planned out. Are things accessible, what about parking, all that sort of thing.”

How a spinal cord injury affects my daily life when it comes to health and wellbeing......

 “I have become much more conscious about my health and wellbeing since my injury. If I don’t look after myself, my spasms will tell me something is up and ask anybody in the chair, we all want to reduce spasms as much as possible. They are horrible things. Like an electric current going through your body.” 

How living with SCI has enabled me to stay on top of my everyday health......

“Health is all about diet and exercise. My ability to exercise has obviously been reduced so I find myself being very careful about what I eat, what I put in my body. I don’t think I’ve ever been more of a healthy eater than I am now. I was always a greasy spoon kind of a guy, but now it’s more like stir fries and smoothies!”

My #EverdayHealth bugbear is.......

 “Spasms spasms spasms. If I am at all uncomfortable below the level of my injury, I really know about it.” 

My top tips for #EverydayHealth for SCI people.......

 “Stretching. It is the single most important thing that I can do to improve my daily wellbeing. It is really amazing the effect that it has. Stretching loosens up my whole body and really alleviates my spasms.” 

#EverydayHealth matters for SCI people because.......

 “We all hide how we physically feel. We are all dealing with levels of discomfort that almost everybody else doesn’t have to deal with. We all hide it but it certainly can affect our mental health.”

What people don't know about SCI……

 “Life in a wheelchair can be as fulfilling a life as everybody else’s. It’s the little things that people don’t see that really affect us. It’s the pain, pressure sores, bladder infections. The things that we don’t want you to know about. It’s those things that make life difficult, not really the fact that we are in chairs.”

#SCIAD22 #EverydayHealth