I went to see the new Bond film last week. I wasn’t impressed. It was too long, too slow, too serious. I was impressed, though, with my pelvis. I’ve never sat so comfortably in the cinema. I did get fidgety by the end, but who wouldn’t with a three hour film that had none of the excitement and humour of the Bond films of old. My pelvis has really come to life lately and, when I look back to the early days, the change is phenomenal. There was a time when my pelvis simply didn’t have life. It was crushed under that section of my body above that still had life to it. It was disconnected from higher regions of the trunk at the lumbar sacral junction, so to speak. My trunk above the pelvis had enormous structural deficiencies, but nonetheless had a certain integrity to it. That integrity did not extend below the lumbar sacral junction so, in a structural, bio-mechanical, sense, that was a point of disconnection. The pelvis used to be devoid of feeling, all normal feeling at any rate, although I could feel the lumbar sacral junction and the severe weakness, at that point in the spine, was a cause of great discomfort, particularly when sitting through a long film. It is hard to describe the feeling of well being that has returned to my pelvis lately as it is something you tend to take for granted when able bodied, while the lack of pain at the lumbar sacral junction is something we can all relate to more, especially when a significant number of able bodied people succumb to a weakness there. The feeling of well being is simply that of life and it has to be considered here that your body can exist without life and without the feeling of comfort that life brings.
The pelvis is home to the lower intestines, bladder and bowels and it is these organs that are the foundation for the pelvic structure. It is there pressure, density and so volume they occupy, accordingly, that give the pelvis its volume. Without that inner quality the pelvic skeletal structure will collapse in upon itself, in turn denying capacity for the proper insertion of the legs at the hip joints. This is the scenario I was living with and the scenario I have now managed to move beyond. Bladder and bowel function, or rather lack thereof, are a major factor in spinal injury and in some ways can be more debilitating than the lack of function of the legs. They tend to be the unspoken side of paraplegia and I will not be going too far in breaking that trend; it is not a subject I am too comfortable talking about. I will say that there function has greatly improved, substantially raising my quality of life. There is a long way to go there, but I am no longer lifeless in that region and there is once again a structural foundation to the pelvis. This gives for far greater articulation of the skeletal structure, descending the structural integrity truly into the legs, whereas once that integrity stopped at the lumbar region.
With my upper body (the trunk above the level of paralysis that was by no means exempt from structural collapse) coming very close to full capacity, bringing full capacity back to the pelvis will be the next milestone and with the life I have now re-engaged in the pelvis, the real hurdle to achieving that has already been overcome. Who knows if I’ll ever overcome the paralysis in the lower legs or even regain good strength in the upper legs. I’m unlikely to ever be a James Bond, however, I do intend to engineer a great deal more improvement yet.
Spinalroots 