MysteryFro

Not out of line at all. I'm a 19-year-old dude of course it's important to me. It's not the same but it still happens and luckily I have a girlfriend to try it with. The sensation is different and I can only get an erection through touch but I can still have sex. I just started taking Cialis to help get up easier so we'll see how that goes. I've tried to masturbate but I've never reached a climax which kind of sucks. I actually haven't had a full release since the injury so I'm waiting for that moment, should be monumental.

My advice would be to forget about the past and not to worry about the future. When you're in an injury like this every single day something new will happen and you are always changing. What happened has happened and you have no idea what can happen in the future. Initially when this injury happened all I could think about was how many things I wouldn't be able to do. Now five months later I'm doing many of those things that I told myself would never happen. Just take on each day and keep your head up, you are your own worst enemy and this fight is 80% mental. You have to have a positive attitude or you're just going to hold yourself back.

For me personally I opted out of the colostomy bag as I wanted to keep my body as normal as possible. Basically to poop I do what's called a dil or digital stimulation where I use a stick of sorts to stimulate my rectum and cause my colon to contract and naturally push out the stool. At the moment I need some assistance as I'm just starting to master the process. One of the hardest parts about it is making sure the stool is at the correct consistency. If it's too hard I'm not able to pass the stool with my own stimulation due to the nature of the stick I use. If it's too soft it's just no fun so I have to balance stool softeners and fibers to reach a happy medium.

As compared to before the injury it's really nothing like it was, however, I am starting to regain some control of my bowel muscles and when stimulating as I loosen my rectum I'm able to voluntarily push out some of the stool. That's more of a new development and the one thing that's similar to how it was before.

There really isn't much that I find offensive when someone is trying to help. In the beginning it was very tough to ask for help or receive offered assistance but now I realize that I really need help and if I try to do everything myself all day long I end up exhausted halfway through the day. I don't mind someone help me get the door or picking up something I've dropped or offering to carry my food to my table when in any other circumstance they wouldn't.

Of course. It was two days after I finished my first year of college at WPI. I was hanging out with some friends at a park and I decided to climb up the tree with a friend. We were about to get out and she said we should go the way we climbed up but I thought sliding off the branch I was sitting on and swing into the ground by grabbing onto another one would be a good idea. So I tried it but unfortunately my momentum swung me out so far that I ended up being horizontal to the ground and my hands slipped off of the branch. At that point I basically fell to the ground landing on my back and neck. The fall forced my C-5 vertebrae into my C6 vertebrae causing it to fracture in 2. One of the halves was forced into my spinal cord and compressed it. Here's a picture: http://i.imgur.com/P4q1qah.jpg (yes it's from snapchat)