If you suffer from a serious spinal cord injury, one of the first things that the doctor is going to tell you is that it may never fully heal. They’re not trying to be negative or make you feel like it’s impossible, but they want to be honest with you about the prognosis. Many times, these injuries do not ever heal. People wind up dealing with them for life.
What you may ask yourself, then, is how this is possible. How is it that technology is so good today that you can carry a computer in your pocket and people can walk on the face of the moon, but a spinal cord injury just can’t heal? Why can we do heart transplants and even face transplants, but we can’t heal the spine?
There are a lot of reasons, but one medical expert noted that we are simply still learning about the spine. While we have come a long way, we still have very far to go.
In the past, he claimed, people actually held to some doctrines that probably held the science back. For a long time, they did not treat spinal cord injuries at all, thinking it impossible. They often focused on things like bed rest over medical procedures. They believed for many years that spinal cord axons had absolutely no ability to regenerate and just had to be protected, but further research showed that they could in the right environment.
These are just a few examples of the ways that the science has changed over the years, but there is still a long way to go. Those dealing with life-changing spinal injuries must know all of the options they have regarding available benefits, like Social Security Disability and other programs.
