What is the hardest part of spinal cord injury rehabilitation for most people? - Marguerite David, MSW

The hardest part of rehabilitation for most people is the realization that when they leave the hospital or go out in the world, things aren’t going to work the same way they did before. My best example is the very young healthy paraplegic guy, very muscular, very adept in his wheelchair and he needed to find a place to live. So we sat and went over the newspaper—he learned how to ride the bus, he could get around, he didn’t have a car—got the newspaper went out that weekend to look for apartments, and rode the bus everywhere. That was new for him; he used to be able to drive. And he came into my office and cried. “I used to just jump in my car, and find an apartment, and circle an ad and go out and look at it. I spent all day on the bus, I get there and it wasn’t accessible like they said in this ad, I couldn’t even get into it! They just said it.” And he realized that the world was not as easy as it was before, finding an apartment was hard. He said, “All that stuff with the PT gym where I worked so hard I could stand in braces, that’s the easy part. This is the hard part.”