Jim & Nancy (Alliston, ON)

By Nancy Milligan

October 14, 2004 started out just like any other day on the farm for us, without knowing that soon, our lives would change forever.

My husband, Jim, was in the field tending to the cattle. He was feeding them a large round bale of hay with the loader tractor, a job he had done thousands of times before. Jim didn’t realize that his left hand was resting on the loader control. The tractor lifted a bale up into the air and then it fell directly onto his forehead, snapping his head downward to his chest, breaking his C6 and C7 vertebrae and rendering him unconscious and paralyzed. From that moment on, for the next several months, I felt as though I was living a bad dream.

Life after Jim’s injury was unimaginably difficult and stressful for us. Fortunately we were connected with Canadian Paraplegic Association (CPA) Ontario early on in Jim’s recovery. CPA Ontario answered all the baffling but urgent questions we were too scared to face alone. CPA Ontario has provided support and encouragement to us ever since.

Although being a registered nurse, I had little knowledge about spinal cord injuries. Only after Jim’s accident did I really realize that a spinal cord injury can happen to anyone at any time, and that a new SCI happens in Ontario almost every day of the year! Prior to 1945, only 10% of people who experienced a spinal cord injury were expected to survive beyond one year. 63 years after the founding of the Canadian Paraplegic Association, the survival rate of an individual who sustains an injury is 85-90%. 

Please consider the barriers people with spinal cord injuries face in your community and know that your actions do count. There’s not a lot of difference between you and me. Things can change in an instant.