Spinal injury patients get help from peers

NEW DELHI: Sixty-eight-year-old Cyril Siriwardane has been wheelchair-bound for the past 29 years. He was working with Sri Lankan Air Force before a careless swerve by a truck driver changed his life forever. He suffered a spinal cord injury and was paralysed waist-down. "I was one of two patients who survived out of the 20 admitted in the spinal injuries ward.Living with such an injury is very difficult. People die of urinary tract infection and pressure sores. You also loose all your sexual functions. I remember it wasn't my doctor who inspired me to keep going but a counsellor who was also on the wheelchair,'' he said.
Siriwardane was among the 10 wheelchair-users who attended the ASCon Peer Counselling workshop organized recently in the capital by the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Vasant Kunj. Counsellors from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and India came together to train in peer counselling.
After spending one year in hospital, Siriwardane came across NGO Motivation from UK that conducted an active rehabilitation training programme for wheelchair-users. He learnt bowel management besides a few tricks to carry out daily chores, which otherwise seemed impossible. And finally joined back as an engineer in the Sri Lankan Air Force. He's a disability advisor today.
Another participant, Fareda Akhter Asma from Bangladesh is all of 27 and has been counselling patients back home since she was 15. "I was 12 when I fell off the roof of my house and suffered a spinal injury. There was no concept of peer counsellors in Dhaka so I decided to become one myself.''
The ASCon workshop was the brainchild of Shivjeet Singh Raghav, peer counsellor, ISIC. "A peer counsellor can provide a lot of psychological support to patients and help them come out of depression. After coming out of the shock of a spinal injury, an individual wants to know when he would start walking again and regain control over bowel and bladder movement, sexuality, etc,'' said Raghav.
The workshop saw several wheelchair-users who wanted to become peer counsellors and use their experience to motivate others. One of them, 52-year-old Chandra Rama Rao never let disability come in way of her dreams. Rao completed chartered accountancy and worked in Central Bank for 16 years. This fighter was forced to quit when the bank refused to promote her as she was paralysed waist-down. Rao said, "I'm not a peer counsellor, but I can use my own experience to teach others. With a positive attitude no mountain is too high and no valley is too low to keep you from achieving your goal.''