Our July Gold Star award is proudly given to the extremely inspirational Brad!! Brad sustained a significant Tetraplegic spinal cord injury in 2014. We have had the pleasure of working with Brad since January 2018, who has been a pure inspiration to us and we wanted to share his 100 day standing challenge journey.
Brad has a love of water and for the 4 years following his accident he had only experienced being immersed in water once at a friends pool. So we worked with Brad to get him back into water via hydrotherapy sessions initially. This has sparked Brad on his own journey of exploring his possibilities to free dive!!!
As with every spinal cord injury, standing and weight bearing through your feet is a vital daily essential, however Brad like most spinal cord injuries was really struggling to achieve this daily activity when we start together. Unfortunately it is actually really hard, when you are fully reliant on full hoist transfers, blood pressure instability, pressure sores and autonomic dysreflexia as barriers. As well as just making the time and mental commitment to complete this task.
As Brad educated himself on the importance of standing he took it upon himself to set himself a 100 day standing challenge!! As a therapist, this was amazing to hear that he was going to try his hardest to make a positive life impacting change to his routines and habits by completing the 100 day challenge.
The video below captures Brad’s story and will inspire you to commit to a 100 day challenge, no matter what it may be.
