When I was injured back in 2010, at the age of 15, it felt like my life was over before it started. I was a very independent person and this injury took that away from me along with many other things. Being a teenager, I didn’t understand the reality of spinal cord damage. Even after doctors told me the severity of my injury, I still thought I would walk out of the hospital.
After a while, it slowly set in that this was something I would be dealing with for the rest of my life. I focused on physical therapy the first few years after my accident. I put my life on hold to focus on my recovery and finish high school. I struggled to see a future for myself being so dependent on others for daily care and quality of life. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career or how I was going to make it work. Thankfully, I went to college and through that experience found my calling: I realized I wanted to become a therapist and use my life experiences to help others.
The best thing about being a therapist is that I can do it independently despite my disability. Doing therapy doesn’t require a lot of physical actions. I just need to use my brain and voice. Now that I am doing therapy and working towards getting my hours for licensure, I can’t imagine doing anything else. But the only reason I became a therapist was because of my injury. Had my accident not happened, I would have never gone to college. I received a wheelchair scholarship that helped pay for my tuition, money that neither me nor my parents had. Plus, I was never an academic student and after high school, I was done.