When a caregiver shows up with a dry cough it forces a paralyzed person to make a decision with no good options: lie motionless in bed, seek hospital admittance, risk a COVID-19 infection. The process for making that decision is explained by two men whose spinal cord injuries (SCI) left them with quadriplegia.
Dinesh Palipana, MD, Emergency Department Physician (Quadriplegic)
“If the caregiver or a team of caregivers becomes affected by COVID‐19, a person’s entire care structure can be dismantled. Such an event may require social admissions to hospitals, or in worse cases, generate life‐threatening neglect in the community. Social admissions will increase the risk of hospital‐acquired complications as well as acquiring COVID‐19 itself.”
Dinesh Palipana, MD
Click here to read Dinesh Palipana’s complete journal article in the Wiley Online Library.
Stan Brown, U.S. Army Veteran and Paralyzed Veterans of America Peer Mentor (Quadriplegic)
“If you’re there with your wife, maybe, relative, taking care of you, or a small group that can make you feel safe, Okay…But in my case, there’s six different people, and everybody they come in contact with, and that’s something that weighs on me, really all the time. There’s no end in sight. It’s just difficult.”
Stan Brown
