The Good & Bad of Sustaining an SCI When You’re Older


Terri Wickstrom riding a kayak
Once Terri Wickstrom extricated herself from the nursing facility she ended up in, she regained the freedom to live her life as she chose.

According to those who know these things, people who sustain spinal cord injuries today are nearly 14 years older than their counterparts from 40 years ago. In 1980 the average age of a person sustaining an SCI was the late-20s, but now it’s 43. We’re often quick to assume young people are more adaptable. Still, these four wheelers who became injured as established adults show that older sometimes really is wiser — and often has better insurance.

Experience Has Its Advantages

Jeff Kletzmayer sitting in powerchair in front of a waterfall
If Kletzmayer ever feels down about his injury, he thinks of his family and that gets him through.

Jeff Kletzmayer joined the SCI/D club in September 2018 by falling off a roof and sustaining a T12 injury. He was 52 years old. The fall also left him with two torn rotator cuffs, two shattered ankles, a broken pelvis, and sundry other scrapes and bruises. Technically speaking, he was all buggered up.

Due to all the physical complications, Kletzmayer’s rehab was delayed, and when he did receive some rehab, it lasted a mere month. As a result, he was a bit behind from the beginning. “I broke my left femur within the first year and had gallbladder surgery the next,” Kletzmayer recalled. “I believe I received poor medical care with the femur problem, setting me back at least a year. I lost a lot of mobility in my left leg.” He added that simply staying healthy enough to gain mobility sometimes felt like a full-time job.

Initially, Kletzmayer was extremely uncomfortable in crowds, often feeling like he was in everyone’s way. “Getting through a crowded room is still very difficult,” he says.

When asked about the emotional aspects of his accident, Kletzmayer says he deals with a bit of depression but that when he does, “I think of my family, and it brings me back.” He is still adjusting, learning new tricks, remembering old ones and dealing with issues as they arrive. Fortunately, Kletzmayer’s home was already set up quite well for him, which allowed him to quickly learn how to get through his days.

However, the emotional aspects of adjustment were somewhat different. “I thought I could figure all this out on my own. After maybe a year, I found and joined a support group, which has helped a ton,” he says. “It also confirmed that my experiences are fairly universal.”

Did being injured at a later age give him an edge? He believes so. “I had an established career, so I think dealing with this was easier being older. I was pretty much ready to retire,” he says.

He also repeatedly expressed a great deal of gratitude for his financial standing, especially in contrast to many who must rely on Medicaid and SSI or SSDI. “After running a successful business for 23 years, along with having good health insurance through the company, I don’t have the struggles many others have,” he says. “I have a little extra cash to afford the items that make independence more achievable.”

Life Experience Can Smooth the Way

Toby Houston, Craig Hospital’s director of psychology, would find many of the reactions and ways these older SCI survivors dealt with their injuries unsurprising.

“My experience has been that older individuals tend to demonstrate better coping and adjustment, at least during acute rehabilitation. Older people tend to have lived a life that includes some previous experiences with loss, managing uncertainty, grief,” he says.

Houston says older individuals can often use those life experiences to help manage their emotional reactions to injury. He adds that older people are more likely to be in longer-term relationships that have some stability. Long-term shared commitment relieves older people with new injuries of the concerns about meeting someone new and being accepted.

However, there is one area that may be more difficult for established adults — navigating role changes. “Many are more likely to have established roles within their relationships — husband, wife, parent — and there can be unique challenges posed by threats to long-standing identities,” he says. “Someone who viewed themselves as the primary breadwinner, the financier or the steady emotional guidepost/problem solver for family members may need to explore what it will be like to shift roles. That can be more challenging when those roles have become comfortable over a lifetime.”

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On Her Own Terms

Terri Wickstrom, 58, has used a chair for about six years after sustaining a C6 injury in a bike accident. She says those years have been challenging. Before her injury, Wickstrom enjoyed being a cyclist, hiker and runner, so getting used to life as a wheelchair user was quite the jolt. “I enjoyed getting in the dirt,” she says.

Following acute care, she did three months of so-so rehab at a general hospital. “The rehab I got there wasn’t nearly the quality you get at an SCI center because the staff is much more familiar with stroke than SCI. Plus, I was the only person with an SCI receiving rehab, so I didn’t have others to commiserate with,” she said via email. She went to live with her brother for a short time, but that didn’t work out. As a result, she went to a nursing home, where she could not practice much of what she had learned in rehab.

Her time in the nursing home was dark indeed. “I hated living there, and because of that, I came to hate the chair as well,” she says. “They wouldn’t allow me to transfer in and out of bed, most likely due to liability issues. The environment made me feel very dependent.” Being surrounded by sickness caused her mood to suffer a great deal. She compared the facility to prison since she could not set her own schedule, eat what she pleased and go about her life unimpeded.

Yet another downside of living in the institution was her inability to access outpatient rehab at nearby Craig Hospital, as Craig’s policy requires people to live in the community rather than in a facility.

Once Wickstrom extricated herself from the nursing home and found enough assistance with dressing, light chores and cooking, she finally regained a decent quality of life, free to do as she pleased and simply live on her own terms. As a bonus, she could access Craig for PT sessions.

She says she never went through a self-pity phase. “I don’t dwell on being in the chair. This is just the way it is now,” she says. “I try to accept what comes and live in the moment.” As for age at the time of injury, Wickstrom regrets not being younger simply because she would have been more limber.

She now relies on religion and prayer for assistance. “Talking to God helps,” she says. “I also look for things to be grateful for.”

Refusing to be Detoured

Bill Fertig was 45 in 1999 when he got in a motorcycle accident that left him with 30 fractures, three of which were SCIs, and a traumatic brain injury. It took nearly a year for all his injuries to heal. He functions as a T7 complete para.

Bill Fertig and his wife take a selfie
As long as his wife, who he calls his soulmate, is by his side, Bill Fertig says he can deal with anything.

At the time of his injury, Fertig was in his 25th year working as a police officer. Having to give up the job he had dreamed of since he was a teen was tough to deal with, but Fertig refused to abandon his passion. His first post-injury employment was as a 911 emergency call-taker/dispatcher. He later secured a private investigator’s license and began working cases for a local law firm.

Fertig says it only took him a day or two to wrap his head around his future as a wheeler before beginning to move forward and learn what he needed to live successfully with SCI. “There was no, ‘Why me?’ he says. “I was a big boy. I knew motorcycles were dangerous.” The driving force behind that mental shift was his wife. “She quickly reassured me we would have a good life despite my SCI.”

Anger, however, was another matter. “I was moving forward productively and hopefully, but I think the frustration of not being able to do this or that, or home/auto maintenance like in the past, caused a lot of frustration that came out as anger directed at those that were closest to me,” he recalls. He profoundly regrets making it harder on his family that first year.

“Faith helped me with overall perspective as I fought back after sustaining my SCI,” he says.

With the help of his wife, he battled to perfect their home modifications and find new ways of doing things. “We were a team, doing what was necessary to live successfully with SCI.” Other than those fits of anger, he says his primary adjustment was to accept no longer being in law enforcement.

He recalls those early days with a smile. “We were so unorganized at first that it turned comical. But over time, we got faster, quickly learning more of what to do and how, until it became second nature,” he says. “When I was injured, I’d been married to my wife, my soul mate, for 25 years, and together we tackled and overcame the common problems associated with life with SCI.”

Now 66, Fertig continues to work as the director of United Spinal Association’s Resource Center, offering help and information regarding home modifications, returning to work and low-tech, affordable personal transportation options.

She Lets Fate Guide Her

Shubha Ratnaparkhi’s introduction to life on wheels came at age 57 in the form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which stole almost all of her physical abilities. “At my worst, I was unable to blink my eyes,” she says. She spent four weeks in ICU, followed by two months on a ventilator, then two more months in a longer-term active care institution, culminating with four months in a sub-acute care facility.

Shubha Ratnaparkhi in standing frame at rehab with two therapists
Shubha Ratnaparkhi expressed gratitude she got Guillain-Barré later in life rather than earlier, noting that she has no regrets.

“Frankly, I had no time to think about anything,” she says. The whirlwind left her with the equivalent of C6-7 quadriplegia. Guillain-Barre involves the peripheral rather than the central nervous system, affecting the nerve endings that talk to muscles and impacting the ability to breathe but leaves sensation relatively intact.

“But here’s the thing,” she says. “I was old — I’d lived my life. I had few regrets because I always tried to live in a regret-fee manner, so I was OK with it.”

She finds the dependency that comes with her condition to be her biggest challenge. “You have to put up with the patronization, even from strangers,” she says. “You have to get used to being invisible or treated as an imbecile. There are things you know how to do but can’t because of your limitations. You see the weeds but can’t pull them. You see something beautiful but are afraid to touch it for fear of breaking it.”

Ratnaparkhi describes Guillain-Barré as a condition “where you hit the bottom and then keep climbing up,” which led her to ask, “What now?” rather than “Why me?” And “what now” has led to near-total independence as well as some walking.

Religion is not central to her life, though she does believe in a benevolent God, which she says “makes it easier because it saves me from the anxiety that this is God’s punishment for me. I believe He has confidence that I am up to the challenge. So, in a way, religion does have an influence on my adjustment.”

Philosophy interests her more, and she points to this quote by Roman philosopher Seneca: “Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.”

“Fate brought GBS in my life, but I still have a choice in how I deal with it,” she says. She has yet to adjust fully to her circumstances as she continues to improve. “I view this as a temporary state. If I ever plateau, I’ll try to adjust to my circumstances. Right now, it is still an adventure, with a goal to achieve and work to do.”


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Ronald Messier
2 years ago

I was an Effective Cyclist for 43 years when a 78 y/o woman hit me in the back. What a shock when I woke up at Boston medical Center and was told I was paraplegic. Fortunately in early June of 2003 I rode my 18 speed touring bicycle from Quincy, MA to Montreal and back. While in Montreal I rode in Le Tour de L’ile de Montreal/The Tour of the Island of Montreal. The Tour of the Island of Montreal. During the summer I attend one outdoor concert a week.

Deborah Gregson
Deborah Gregson
2 years ago

My mom fell off a bed while trying to turn on a ceiling fan at the age of 71. She hit her neck on a dresser before hitting the floor leaving her a C- 3,4,5 incomplete quadriplegic in 2002. She was visiting my sister in Boulder, CO where she and my dad then stayed the next six months, the first three she was in an ICU and the last three in a stroke rehab as Craig wouldn’t accept her because she “was too old to relate to the younger athletic men” who were there at the time. When she returned home to CA the only modification that was made was a ramp into the mobile home and the first split adjustable frame for a Sleep Number Bed that was available before it was officially on the market (we asked and they were gracious).

Bill Fertig was extremely helpful to me personally with information and encouragement when I called him asking questions about my mom and things she would need, where to look for financial support, assistive devices, in-home help, transportation home, and other stuff. I will always remember his kind conversation even though he had only recently been injured himself.

Mom never really adjusted to her injury or her life after SCI. She was angry, guilty, devastated. She and my dad were able to use long-term care insurance along with both her and dad’s retirement savings to have in-home help for the next 14 years until she passed away in 2017 of pneumonia. She refused counseling, refused to meet others with SCI, refused assistive devices, refused to leave the house unless going to a doctor appointment, refused to see friends. She basically became a hermit at home during a time when so many new devices and opportunities were becoming available as a result of Christopher Reeve’s experience with paralysis.

My mom was depressed, unhappy, and made everyone around her miserable after her injury. She wasn’t like this before her accident, she’d always been the problem solver in our family, the one who encouraged others, listened to people, boosted them up to carry on. Mom created an atmosphere so our home was the place everyone wanted to be when we were kids. When her neck broke her spirit broke inside. It was devastating to watch and realize there was nothing we could do to encourage her to look at what she did have available instead of what had been lost. She was terribly afraid of dying but so badly “wanted to be free of being stuck in a body that entrapped her like concrete.”

One positive thing that did come from her situation was my meeting another person with paralysis on the CRPF website. He lived in the same county and asked for help with a problem he was having. I offered to help and over the last 15 years, we’ve accomplished a lot and have become friends. He has made great progress as a quad, has had amazing opportunities with medical trials because he’s bold and not afraid. Because of the knowledge Bill Fertig shared with me, I was able to then share with this young man, and now he’s doing cutting-edge medical work that will benefit many with paralysis in the future.