She would get out a wrestling mat, and she’d have me transfer to the floor, that’s the physical therapy term, transfer. The way that I did that was with a physical therapist in the hospital. I was learning how to walk with that, and I was getting along pretty well, but they still tell you “Listen, when you’re out in the world, you’re on the sidewalk, you’re getting in and out of the car, sometimes slips and falls happen.” So it’s important before they let you leave the hospital that you know how to get yourself back on your feet. It almost becomes like a peg leg, and you can put weight through it. When you don’t have any strength around those joints and the muscles around those joints, the brace can keep your leg rigid. And when I was discharged from the hospital, I had been given a leg brace called a KAFO, which stands for knee, ankle, foot, orthotic. When I was in the hospital, I was largely using a wheelchair. There were a lot of challenges, but one of the ones that has stuck with me as the hardest to overcome was learning how to stand. All basic things that you have to relearn when your body no longer functions as it did.
I was hospitalized for three months and then I went home with his new paraplegic body and, and had to spend a lot of time learning how to get in and out of the car, and get into the house, and use the bathroom, take a shower. So I live with a lot of chronic pain as a result of my spinal cord injury. Whenever only one side of your body’s impacted, you get all these imbalances. My left leg is now paralyzed, and it also affects my bladder. I suffered a spinal cord injury, which resulted in paraplegia. In 2019, I was the victim of a hit-and-run, and survived pretty traumatic injuries, including a lot of broken bones and collapsed lungs and internal bleeding. Now that I’m no longer actively racing, I still ride a lot, and I’m very passionate about it, but I also have a passion for just being outside and hiking.
I am a PR and marketing professional, and I work for the virtual cycling platform Zwift.įor a lot of my adult life, I was an amateur bike racer, and had a lot of passion for cycling and riding and racing bikes. I’m originally from Brooklyn, New York, and I’ve lived in Colorado since 2018.
It was scary, because every time I couldn’t stand up, It was a reminder of how weak I was, and how much my body had changed, and how much my life was going to change going forward. I was trying to get back into the gym and I was working out, from a seated position in the wheelchair, but I was just not used to moving around again, and everything was out of balance. It has been edited for length and clarity. Andrew Bernstein told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast.
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