20 replies to this topic

[DarkLady]

Hey.

I hope that none of the following post will offend anybody or breach any forum rules. If it does then I apologise and understand if it is removed.

I am currently writing my first novel. It is difficult for me to research this novel as I also have two part-time jobs and have to rely on public transport (and have a very small budget for that) so I am mainly conducting any research through the internet and by contacting people I know who have knowledge of the topics I am addressing.

One of the characters in my novel (the mother of the protagonist and an important character in her own right) suffered a spinal cord injury at the age of twenty-two due to her husband pushing her down a flight of stairs. The novel is set years later when she is roughly forty-four. When some lovely friends of mine read the first draft of the novel some of the feedback was that it would be nice to have a bit more of this character’s back-story. So, I am currently writing this redraft and including a lot of detail about how she obtained her Paraplegic Spinal Cord Injury.

The character is in a very loving marriage when the novel is set and has a mostly happy life with her husband and son but the back-story is obviously very upsetting for a number of reasons (the spousal violence she endures and the injury that results from it) so I really don’t want to upset or offend anybody any further with inaccuracies etc. I thought I would try asking for information on a forum where people will know what they’re talking about and can help me or correct me.

I am currently writing a section where the character is in hospital after her husband has pushed her down the stairs and would like to know the sorts of treatments she would be likely to receive, how soon the hospital staff would have a wheelchair for her, how they would go about getting her used to using a wheelchair, any issues I may not have thought of that go along with using a wheelchair for the first time etc. I have tried researching it by myself but not only is the information difficult to come across, it is also all about today. In the novel this all took place about twenty-two years ago so the treatments available.

If anybody is willing to offer any sort of information, advice, personal anecdotes, links to helpful sites etc. I would be very appreciative.

Thank you.

[Lucydog]

oh dear............

[qbounce]

Wow,
quite a lot of info to take in. The most important question begins with, when (time wise) did the accident occur, the 60's, 70's, the 80's??? Like all medicine, there have been many advances as to how quickly ones recovery is (surgery wise) vs. the down side of what their insurance company's willingness to pay for therapy is.

Plus, all the other factors you mentioned can all be better answered if you tell us WHEN the mothers accident occurred.

Welcome to the site.

[mellowgator]

i've been injured 23 years and unfortunaley there has been little progress in medical advancment. they still do the same procedures. some people have spinal fusions which takes a piece of bone out of your hip and fuses it to keep the neck stable. or some people wear halos. you didn't mention if the fall resulted in a broken neck or a broken back these are 2 different animals and you need to decide which one occured.

[qbounce]

mellowgator, on 16 July 2010 - 05:32 PM, said:

i've been injured 23 years and unfortunaley there has been little progress in medical advancment. they still do the same procedures. some people have spinal fusions which takes a piece of bone out of your hip and fuses it to keep the neck stable. or some people wear halos. you didn't mention if the fall resulted in a broken neck or a broken back these are 2 different animals and you need to decide which one occured.

I realize all injuries are different, but I neither had bone removed to stabilize my neck, nor did I wear a halo, so I stand by my first statement regarding the medical advances, and quicker recovery time due because of it.

[Ches]

This is like the fifth or sixth writer to come here looking for input.

I can't remember WHO said it first, but they said it best "Stick to something you know".

All you are going to find is that we are all COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, from our injuries to our personalities, there is no guideline to any of it.

[mellowgator]

qbounce, on 16 July 2010 - 06:01 PM, said:

mellowgator, on 16 July 2010 - 05:32 PM, said:

i've been injured 23 years and unfortunaley there has been little progress in medical advancment. they still do the same procedures. some people have spinal fusions which takes a piece of bone out of your hip and fuses it to keep the neck stable. or some people wear halos. you didn't mention if the fall resulted in a broken neck or a broken back these are 2 different animals and you need to decide which one occured.

I realize all injuries are different, but I neither had bone removed to stabilize my neck, nor did I wear a halo, so I stand by my first statement regarding the medical advances, and quicker recovery time due because of it.

hi q bounce,

i think we were treated differently due to my injury being incomplete and yours being complete. i know that now a days that they treat new injuries with steriods to keep swelling down. i know you feel there has been a great deal of medical advances but on what do you base that sentiment? just curious.

i know people injured before me used a striker frame while i was put on a roto-bed. i know they now have mattresses that move sand etc. but don't they generally just flip patients every couple of hours.

i'd love to hear of the medical advancements you are referring to. please educate me. what was dont to stabalize your neck?

most of the new injuries i have been in contact with haven't been in a spinal rehab like i was. i'm hearing that people are released out of the hospital after a month. i didn't realize that this was due to medical advances but to insurance.

mellowgator

[S&W Winger]

Hey Dark Lady, what glared at me was that your focus was the chair, the chair, the chair: it's not all about the chair! The chair is freedom, we are now chair-mobile...but there is just so much more involved that you would need to read so much to understand...like posted above, best to stick to what one knows...

Your project would be like me writing a story from the perspective of the Türk Halkı...

With some cursory research, a minor character could be drawn with some authenticity, but to delve deeply into this reality would require much more time than all your responsibilities appear to offer...

...especially since you have not even bothered to return here...


But I appreciate your efforts...

Edited by S&W Winger, 16 July 2010 - 07:08 PM.

[S&W Winger]

mellowgator, on 16 July 2010 - 06:39 PM, said:

qbounce, on 16 July 2010 - 06:01 PM, said:

mellowgator, on 16 July 2010 - 05:32 PM, said:

i've been injured 23 years and unfortunaley there has been little progress in medical advancment. they still do the same procedures. some people have spinal fusions which takes a piece of bone out of your hip and fuses it to keep the neck stable. or some people wear halos. you didn't mention if the fall resulted in a broken neck or a broken back these are 2 different animals and you need to decide which one occured.

I realize all injuries are different, but I neither had bone removed to stabilize my neck, nor did I wear a halo, so I stand by my first statement regarding the medical advances, and quicker recovery time due because of it.

hi q bounce,

i think we were treated differently due to my injury being incomplete and yours being complete. i know that now a days that they treat new injuries with steriods to keep swelling down. i know you feel there has been a great deal of medical advances but on what do you base that sentiment? just curious.

i know people injured before me used a striker frame while i was put on a roto-bed. i know they now have mattresses that move sand etc. but don't they generally just flip patients every couple of hours.

i'd love to hear of the medical advancements you are referring to. please educate me. what was dont to stabalize your neck?

most of the new injuries i have been in contact with haven't been in a spinal rehab like i was. i'm hearing that people are released out of the hospital after a month. i didn't realize that this was due to medical advances but to insurance.

mellowgator

It is all the same now,except the hospital stay is a lot less due to the almighty insurance companies...they wanted to fuse my neck even before my accident with bone from my hip...put it off...then they were going to do so again after my accident, but they put it off due to all the other surgeries...for my thoracic fractures, they performed corpectomies and used metal rods, plates and cages...nothing much has changed here in many years...at the trauma hosp, I was on that moving sand bed, as I could not be turned due to comorbidities...after seven weeks (6 on vent), I was dumped into a nursing home for another 2 1/2 months or so.. I was tossed from the rehab after 5-6 weeks...could not even sit up quite yet...now my hands keep getting numb and I don't relish the thought of more of their "practicing" the "art" of medicine...I'm waiting until till it becomes a "science" whenever that may be...

[mellowgator]

i took to the internet to see what the newest and latest and the fact is the decompression of the cord is only necessary or beneficial for an incomplete injury. this i just read from the uf website.


Treatment of Spinal Cord Injury
Because of the force that is required to fracture the spine, many spinal cord-injured patients suffer have significant associated injuries in the chest or abdomen. For isolated spinal cord injuries the mortality after one year is about 5-7%. If a patient survives the first 24 hours after spinal cord injury, the likelihood of survival for ten years is approximately 75-80%.

The immediate treatment of SCI is stabilization of the spine to prevent any further injury to the spinal cord. Within the first 24 hours, steroid drugs such as methylprednisolone are used to reduce swelling in the spinal cord. The benefit of steroids is limited and it has been shown to be useful only for a 24-hour period.

Surgery is indicated when there is significant instability of the spine or if there is compression of the spinal cord with an incomplete SCI. This may be a result of fractured bones or hematomas. Severe fractures may involve several columns of support in the spine, which will require surgical fixation to regain stability. Surgical fixation involves both instrumentation and fusion. Fusion is the joining of two vertebrae with bone graft (either from the patient or from cadaver) held together with metal hardware such as plates, rods, hooks, screws, and cages. The goal of the bone graft is to join the vertebrae above and below to form one solid piece of bone. It may take several months or longer to create a solid fusion. The instrumentation holds the bones together while the fusion is taking place.

Once stabilized, the goal of SCI treatment is rapid rehabilitation with the help of physical medicine specialists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and social workers. Patients must have a strong social support system to help them cope with their injury and relearn how to perform daily activities.

hope this helps to clarify why i had the fusion and you didn't. it's simply we are different sorts of injury.

mellowgator

[Trinity]

There is a good saying that springs to mind, "Write what you know"

[Snakeye]

If all writers wrote only what they knew we would only have autobiographies on the bookshelves...At least this person is willing to stick their neck into the unknown and learn something instead of getting his or her info from Wikapedia like some writers do...

[Ches]

Nope Snakeeye, if she was that eager she'd be back already like S&W said.
And if she cared to do research than she wouldve already searched the forum, found the other writers that came here w/ same goal, saw what we spit out, and maybe rethought her approach and tried again.

Im not impressed.

[mellowgator]

darklady said she worked 2 jobs. i hope she continues with her book. snakeye was right on. it's not uncommon for writers to do research even if it is for fiction.

i'd love to read what she has so far. darklady can you post an exerpt from your book? if you want to pm me i can give you a rundown on my background i was injured 23 years ago.

mellowgator

[DarkLady]

I would like to thank everyone for all their input so far. I have to leave for work now but will definitely be back on later to address some of the questions and concerns that have been raised. I didn't feel well last night after posting and went to bed very early so I apologise for not being back on. Thanks again.

[dom]

I can't really see what extra info you would get on here against the net info,most of it can be found [even browsing old threads on here]
i doubt if any sci reader would make a great hoo-haa about small inacurracies anyway and joe public would be oblivious to it anyway [which i assume would be the readership]as said before about six researchers have come on here for info into a book whilst laudable i think unnecessary and as said before all of us are different with regards to rehab etc
best of luck with the novel

[DarkLady]

Okay, back home from work now. I’ll try to address everything in the order it came up in the thread.

@ qbounce

Sorry, having reread my initial post it does seem a bit rambling (after I professed to be a writer!) and I could have been clearer as to when the injury occurred. It happened around twenty-two years ago, which would be 1988 (give or take a couple of years as I don’t specify the year the novel takes place in but due to the technology in it etc. it would have to be around now).


@ mellowgator

It’s a broken back. From what I know, it would be in the thoracic region. I think the lower thoracic area of the back. I’ll do some reading into spinal fusion as more questions may arise then.


@ Ches, S&W Winger and Trinity

I did think this may be the opinion of some people. Obviously, it is a risk when writing about something you have no direct knowledge of and the last thing I want to do with my novel is offend anybody or show up my own ignorance on any given topic. However, as Snakeye said, fiction would always tend towards the autobiographical if nobody tried to look past their own lives and many great works of fiction would never have been written.

This character started out as a relatively minor character. However, I started to become more and more interested in her and developed a whole subplot for her. This subplot had very little to do with her paraplegia so I didn’t think my own lack of knowledge would be too obvious. Now that I’m also writing her back-story, though, it’s becoming more and more important for me to know enough not to be writing rubbish. I don’t want to start talking about ‘characters having lives of their own’ or ‘characters speaking to me’ because I think that all sounds very pretentious, but this character really did sort of grow and form without me realising it had happened. Now she’s an important part of the novel and I would hate to write her out, tone down her whole subplot or change her.


@ S&W Winger

I didn’t mean to sound like I was only thinking about the chair.

In terms of all the treatment, I will try to gain a good base of knowledge of everything the character is likely to have gone through. I won’t include everything, though (for a quick back-story this is already running into many words of the novel). I think I mentioned the chair the most because I thought a possible scene would involve her trying to get her head around the thought of having to rely on a wheelchair for mobility and this brought up questions of how medical staff even go about introducing a person to a wheelchair etc.

In terms of all the emotional and mental trauma and way she would deal with it all, I thought it would be silly to ask about something like that because everyone’s so different and it would depend on so many things (personality of the person involved, how the injury was sustained, the level of support from friends and family, what career they had envisaged, age etc).


@ Ches

On second thoughts, you are absolutely right. I should’ve searched the forum before posting to see if the information I was after was already available and to see if any other writers had asked questions and what sort of reception they got. My fiancé suggested looking on a forum and I guess I was too eager. I am a member on a couple of forums, myself, and know how irritating it is when someone asks something I answered for somebody else the previous week. That was my mistake. Sorry.


@ mellowgator

I’m a bit funny about posting my work online. I’m happy to email you an excerpt, though, but if you want something from this specific character’s subplot it might have to wait a few days as I’m rewriting a lot of her stuff at the moment. The focus of her subplot has changed after feedback I got on the first draft of the novel and, like I said, I’m also writing her back-story. If you want a few sections that span across the four main characters, I’ll have to figure out what to send you as the word count on the novel is currently sitting at around 90,000 words.

I’d like to spend a bit of time with my fiancé today as he’s been working nightshifts so today is the only day I’ll get to spend much time with him for the next week. Tomorrow I’m also working but, if you’re sure you don’t mind, I’ll probably PM you after work tomorrow or on Monday when I’ll be free all day (I’m in the UK).

[S&W Winger]

The Dark Lady returneth...that is as least a good sign...


OK, so I am also a writer, so would be willing to assist you if possible...while I can write 'em, I can eat 'em as well...words, that is, before anyone gets cute...


So after you search around and get your bearings on how you would like to proceed...then ask us away...


I'd also like to read some of your work...please email: Beverly thanks...

Edited by S&W Winger, 17 July 2010 - 04:41 PM.

[qbounce]

Mellowgator, upon further understanding, more than likely you're right about the bone to help fuse my discs together. You must be, as I find no evidence to support any other type of fusion, although it could be for lack of trying harder. Most things I do lately, unless there's really something in it for me on the back end, are done rather half-ass . . . either way it ends up back there. Do I have a piece of "dead guy" in my neck? I guess so.

I did find a little blurb about how instrumentation is smaller, and cuts (incisions) may be done by lazer. Could that help the healing process, maybe . . . . who knows? One thing is definite, we all agree that the money insurance companies are willing to pay today has significantly decreased the amount of days, even weeks an inpatient stays at rehab.

I was in rehab a total of 5 weeks, by the way, and finally got my fitted wc 5 months post injury. Glad to help in any way possible!! And I agree, a little research goes far to help a books credibility, so you can either choose to help the OP, or not--directed at anyone who hasn't added any insight to her direct questions, and no one in particular.

Edited by qbounce, 17 July 2010 - 06:05 PM.

[mellowgator]

hi qb,

you were released from the hospital in 5 weeks! to me that sounds crazy. back when i was injured i spent 4 months in a spinal rehab and i left with a w-c. i can't imaging the difficulity of coming home after 5 weeks without a chair. our stories are different. that alone is a huge difference between now and in 1986. when i was in the spinal rehab the norm was 3 months for paras and 4 for quads. now it seems that people are in and our in 4 or 5 weeks. i call that a huge difference. i did have work comp and when it was time for some of us to ride the ergys i got to bc my insurance was better. but my roommate a c1-2 quad didn't have insurance and she got spinal rehab. the insurance companies rule the world more today than then.

i'm not even sure if they still use halos today. they seemed barbaric because they had to screw them into peoples head without anesthesia. but the halos were the ones that did walk eventually. or that's my observation.

i'd love to see a day where there is a cure for this. actually after all these years i haven't given up hope.

dark lady wants a para and that's not me.

cheers,

mellowgator

[qbounce]

mellowgator, on 17 July 2010 - 07:18 PM, said:

hi qb,

you were released from the hospital in 5 weeks! to me that sounds crazy. back when i was injured i spent 4 months in a spinal rehab and i left with a w-c. i can't imaging the difficulity of coming home after 5 weeks without a chair. our stories are different. that alone is a huge difference between now and in 1986. when i was in the spinal rehab the norm was 3 months for paras and 4 for quads. now it seems that people are in and our in 4 or 5 weeks. i call that a huge difference. i did have work comp and when it was time for some of us to ride the ergys i got to bc my insurance was better. but my roommate a c1-2 quad didn't have insurance and she got spinal rehab. the insurance companies rule the world more today than then.

i'm not even sure if they still use halos today. they seemed barbaric because they had to screw them into peoples head without anesthesia. but the halos were the ones that did walk eventually. or that's my observation.

i'd love to see a day where there is a cure for this. actually after all these years i haven't given up hope.

dark lady wants a para and that's not me.

cheers,

mellowgator

Mg,
I was just referring to the actual therapy ward. My injury was Oct. 1st, and I was home one week prior to Turkey day, so it was a grand total of 6 weeks, including pre/post-op periods.

Yes, they still wear halos. I saw a guy with that and a body cast on, and it made his transfers pretty useless, but as you stated, that's a higher injury level for a different story. Cheers back!

Good luck Darklady. I'll let the paras take over now.

Edited by qbounce, 17 July 2010 - 10:19 PM.