Do children with spinal cord injuries grow up to marry and raise families?

Adults who sustain spinal cord injuries as children absolutely can marry and have wonderful relationships, and if they want, choose to have and raise a wonderful family. It's very exciting for us, working in pediatrics to be able to see someone who was injured at a young age develop very well through all of their teenage years, and bright transition into adulthood, and then get married and come back and visit us with their first-born child. So absolutely, anyone with a spinal cord injury can and may have a child, and certainly have wonderful and high-quality relationships and get married if they so choose.

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.

Yes, absolutely. In fact, we have patients that send us wedding pictures, and baby pictures with Christmas cards, and they have a rich, full adult life.