Personal Experience

The Road to Recovery

My time working with Spaulding Rehabilitation Network at the McGraw Center has been an especially rewarding experience. From learning about how the cycles work and can be adapted to interacting with different people who have a wide variety of disabilities, some of which have the same disabilities but express them in vastly different manners, I have had the opportunity to gain knowledge that one could only attain by working with an adaptive sports program. What makes the program truly rewarding is not just the knowledge I gain from it, but the joy I am able to bring to the people who come to participate in the adaptive sports program as well. One particular participant comes to mind when I think about how we have a positive impact on the lives of the people who participate. A woman, who I will refer to as 'Heather', signed up to cycle with us one day. Heather expressed her condition as partially paraplegic where she could walk short distance, no more than 20 feet, with the aid of a cane. This is not an uncommon disability as people who have cerebral palsy or experienced a knee injury in the past will present in this manner. I was sent out with Heather to cycle along the Cape Cod Rail Trail and the topic of her injury and how she came to join us at McGraw Center came up. After a bit of talking, I learned that prior to her injury, she participated in triathlons and was a member of the U.S. Air Force and there was rarely a day where she wasn't up and being active. It had been two years since Heather had engaged in any real physical activity, and was skeptical about coming to the McGraw Center to cycle since she wasn't able to walk long distances, never mind ride a cycle. Seeing someone who used to be active nearly every day getting back on a cycle after losing that for two years is why I enjoyed working at the McGraw Center for my internship and find the experience to be extremely rewarding.