Blog > Thoughts > Sean's Thoughts > Limp, atrophied legs and new looking shoes don’t cut it.
Limp, atrophied legs and new looking shoes don’t cut it.
Written by Sean on Monday, December 29, 1997
Contrary to popular belief among the wannabe community, not every paras, nor quads have limp legs all the time, nor are necessarily atrophied, and the shoes they wear do tend to get used and scratched.
Ok, a paralyzed leg can’t be controlled, or the paralyzed parts anyway. But it doesn’t mean they’ll be flaccid and limp all the time. A lot of paras have muscles spasms and that will cause the legs to become so rigid at times that the bone would break before it could be bend by force. There are several kinds of spasms, which I won’t describe here but often they are painful, even when you’ve supposedly lost feelings. Ranging from an intense charlie-horse to the pin and needles of legs waking up, but on a scale 1000.
Those spasms also provoke exercise for the muscles, hence atrophy is limited or even almost nil. Another cause of non-atrophy could be swelling. Because the blood pools down the feet, ankles and lower legs they can swell dramatically. I’m sure there are other causes of swelling, but I don’t know them just now….
Which leads us to the shoes…. So many of us, me included at one point or another have seen ourselves as paras, wearing constantly new shoes, without a fold, without a crease, soles almost intact. The truth is, para’s shoes get worn off just like any other shoes, if not faster at times… The patterns of use don’t fit the pattern of an AB, but between transfers, spasms, bumping and so on, the shoes will accumulate quite a lot of wear.
This entry appears in Sean's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2012 - All Rights Reserved.