Do children with spinal cord injuries grow up to marry and raise families? - Lawrence Vogel, MD

Our patients marry, our patients can have children. I always make sure our parents, and particularly our young female patients, know they can have babies, so they need to be fully aware of that. So many of our female patients, as they’ve become adults, have had children, and they are wonderful parents. And obviously some of them, if they’re are more involved with tetraplegic spinal cord injuries, there’s challenges. But again, all I can say is our patients are very resilient, and they find ways to take care of kids, whether or not they have tetraplegia or paraplegia. Our male patients, it can be much more of a challenge having children in a relatively straightforward manner. But with technology that we have today, I would think that any male with a spinal cord injury should assume that they can father a child if they so desire. So when they get to that stage of, you want to make sure you go to a center that is, expert at fertility for people with spinal cord injuries. But I think one could be very optimistic that patients can marry, date, have sexual relationships, have children, families, all that.