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Written by Beth Luce
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Page 2 of 4
Roughly 11,000 people in the United States endure spinal cord injuries each year. Typically, they are white men in their late 20s to mid-30s, and almost half the injuries result from vehicle crashes. The life expectancy of a 20-year-old who survives the first 24 hours after a spinal cord injury and suffers paraplegia (paralysis of the legs) is 45.3 more years—about 13 years less than the general population. A 20-year-old whose upper cervical injuries result in tetraplegia (paralysis of the legs and arms) is expected to live an additional 35.9 years. A 20-year-old who is ventilator dependent at any level of injury is expected to live another 16.4 years.
 Washington cornerback Curtis Williams (seated) watches his team warm up for the 2001 Rose Bowl against Purdue with his brothers David, center, and Paul. Photo by Ben Margot. © 2001 Associated Press.
Many UW alumni are also familiar with Curtis Williams, who was a safety on the UW football team in 2000. During a game against Stanford, he sustained damage to his first and second vertebrae, paralyzing him from the neck down and requiring a ventilator for him to breathe (see “Rolling Forward,” March 2002). He died on May 6, 2002.
No one ever thinks they will be severely disabled. There’s even a slang name for people who haven’t yet suffered an affliction—“temporarily abled bodies,” or TABs. “I always thought, working construction, that I’d probably either break a leg or a finger, or else die in an accident. I never thought I’d become paralyzed,” Hennig says. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
Most who receive a debilitating injury know very little about how to adapt to their changed needs. For the estimated 250,000 people in the United States living with spinal cord injuries, how they adjust hinges largely on the resources available to them. Through the efforts of Professor Diana Cardenas, ’01, chief of service of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the UW Medical Center, many people with spinal cord injuries are learning more about living well. Cardenas has been Hennig’s doctor since he was in rehabilitation.
The most refreshing thing about Cardenas is that she treats patients with respect, Hennig says. She has always been open and tolerant of alternative ideas, such as acupuncture, vitamins and visualization, treating him as someone who has a role in his own treatment—an attitude that Hennig doesn’t find with all doctors. She never presumed to dictate what choices he should make, but was willing to give him information and learn from his experience. “It’s a dialogue, not a diatribe,” he says.
Although modest about her accomplishments, Cardenas is recognized as a leader in spinal cord research and rehabilitation medicine. She is rated one of America’s best by Castle Connolly’s America’s Top Doctors and is one of only a handful of members in her field elected to the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Since 1990, she has directed the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, which this year was named the third best in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
Besides her work as a physician and a teacher, Cardenas has done extensive research on pain treatment and prevention of urinary tract infections in victims of spinal cord injuries. She is also project director for the Northwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury System, one of 16 model spinal cord injury centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The system pools information and resources to provide specialized care to people with spinal cord injuries.
A spinal cord injury is a life-altering event, and all patients face an initial sense of loss and grief, Cardenas explains. “Everybody [with a spinal cord injury] has some degree of loss of control,” she says. “Dealing with that loss can be a struggle for some people. For others, it’s just a bump in the road. Not everybody gets horribly depressed.
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