Dr Kelly Fleming

The hardest personal goal I’ve ever set for myself was learning to walk after I had my spinal cord injury at the age of 9.

After my accident I ended up going to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. My orthopedic surgeon told me point blank that I had two options :

• Learn to use a wheelchair
• Get fitted for a back brace, leg braces and an arm brace and learn to walk with crutches

Back in the early 1980s, I had never seen any kids using wheelchairs so I told her, “I’ll learn to walk”.

Learning to walk was not easy. My back had been broken from just about my waist down, T10-S5. Shattered on the left side. My neck had been damaged and I had bruising of the spinal cord at C7-8. Due to my injury area, surgery was out of the question without losing almost any mobility I still had.

I am an incomplete quadriplegic.

I went through intense physiotherapy, not just the year I had my accident but every day for more than 6 years.

As I still had some minor muscle movement in my right leg, they electrocuted my legs three times a week with a machine that was from the 1940s or 1950s. They hooked me up every other day and went high electric voltage through my legs until a muscle started to move on its own.

Through such intense physiotherapy and my “never give up” attitude, I not only succeeded to learn to walk again, I also learnt to ride my bike. My bike helped me to go places with my friends growing up.

When I was 24 years old, my body said “I’m tired” so I finally started using a wheelchair.