Rehabilitation center for 60 disabled in Poland

This is the story of Emilia (22 years old), who is learning to live in a wheelchair after an accident. Among other things, Emilia received rehabilitation at our Rehabilitation Center.  

“Mila, get hold of yourself girl, because you’ll never walk again!”. I have never heard such thing from the doctors. I’ve realized that myself. To be precise… I’ve realized it with the help of my wheelchair. It’s the second most important vehicle for me. First one – the car, after few roll overs with me inside, had been crushed like a paper ball. That’s how a second life of Emily started.

I don’t remember the day of the accident. I only have few memories of the previous day, more less till 4 p.m. After that – nothing. So I try to recreate the morning that changed my entire life from the stories of other people. It was 2018. I, just like the new century, was 18 years old. I had just finished the third class of vocational technical school. That day the roads were slippery due to June crisp rain. I was in a hurry. Both, me and my sister, were going to work, to Mszczonów. We had a seasonal gig – sorting items in the warehouses of the local company. I was driving the car. The car skidded only 2 kilometers away from our home, on the corner where a couple of drivers had already lost their lives. One of the wheels fell off of my car. Other 3 started to spin on the wet road. I rapidly turned the steering wheel in order to restrain the car. I didn’t make it. The vehicle flipped a couple of times and sat on the roof. Random driver called an ambulance and fire fighters.

My sister was mildly bruised, and I was barely saved. Fractured: left shoulder blade and left collarbone, all facial bones and vertebrae which went into the spinal cord like a knife and damaged it in the neck part. That was the recap of my injuries jotted down in my hospital chart in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. After the first spine stabilizing surgery I was in a medically induced coma. I woke up after the second surgery which was necessary to enhance the stabilization. I stayed in a special housing unit. With a intubation tube in my throat, but conscious. Couple of doctors were standing next to my bed, whispering. As if I wasn’t there. None of them told me that I won’t be able to walk again.

I’d lived in an illusion for a couple of months. If my spine wasn’t broken and the spinal cord wasn’t separated, I would stand on my feet one day. Or if I am able to raise my hand and lower it down, I will be able to do the same with my legs. I just need to practice, practice, practice. I tried not to remember that my hands are so limpsy that even hair comb is falling out of them. And that when sitting in a wheelchair, I need a solid support to avoid falling out in the slightest tilt.

“Mila, get a hold of yourself or you’re not going to be able to walk again!” – a friend from a rehabilitation unit in a hospital in Radom said it to me in 2019. That friend had a friend, also with cerebral palsy. He knew what he was saying so he helped out the doctors. He expressed my sad guesses in a few earthy words. And he made me stop crying.

“Mila, you have to go on, however you can!”, I told to myself every day. And on those days, when I kept hearing several times a day “My God! Poor thing… I pity you so much… What happened to you?” from different people and I was making up multiple stories for them, like “I fell from a horse” or “the bungy line snapped”, just to make them stop asking. My mom was hearing “Why should your daughter finish the school? Let her sit in the house”. And after months and months of filling in the forms, persuading bureaucrats and studying on my won, finally I sat in individual class, with a pen strapped onto my hand, writing arduously letter by letter or dictating the answers to the teachers during my matura exams. Eventually, I got my technical degree in forwarding trade. Then, I practically and reasonably chose my field of studies in the department of finances and accounting at Warsaw University of Life Sciences. And on that day when I went on my first rugby practice with Warsaw mixed team “Four Kings” I’ve heard for the first time about… The Academy of Life and Self-Reliance in Konin. A friend from the rugby team told me about the Doctor Piotr Janaszek PAY IT FORWARD Foundation and about the Academy. I’ve just passed my matura exams and I was starting my university course. My parents and siblings were helping me as much as they could but I wanted to be more independent. I had submitted an application to the Academy and was accepted. I took up a residence in the tutorial appartement for people with disabilities on 10 th July 2022. I’ve spent there 4 months.

“Mila, it’ll be hard but you can do it!”. That was my first thought after one day in the Academy. Because in this place there are no privileges. If you do something and it doesn’t work you have to try again and again, until it works. Therefore, I stopped counting how many times I tried to climb onto my wheelchair from the bed, how many times I was putting on and taking off my shirts or pants. Or how many times I was strapping my Velcro shoes, squirting a toothpaste on a toothbrush or changing my urethral sound. I also don’t remember how many times I was swearing under my nose when I counted the time needed for hanging out the laundry because I forgot to add one minute for picking up the laundry basket, which unfortunately fell out of my hands. One important thing! I am able to perform all of the things above by myself. And it became possible not only because of hundreds and hundreds of attempts but also thanks to the exercises. Intense workouts strengthened my muscles and coordinated few of the reflexes that were still present in my body. The workouts under a professional supervision of physiotherapists working at the Rehabilitation Center in Osada Janaszkowo in Wasosze near Konin.

Do you know how fun it is? What a reason to be proud! To grab a product from the shelf in a shop by myself and put it in the basket. To pull out a credit card out of the pocket and put it into a terminal by myself. To unpack the groceries and put it into the fridge by myself. To reheat the pancakes in the pan by myself. To go out by myself. First to visit the closest street and then to go to the other side of the town. To dress up by myself and show others how to do it. For you it’s a piece of cake. You do such things every day, hundreds of times a day. By try to do it with boxing gloves on. Only then you will understand why I am so happy with the slightest movement.

My plans are getting bolder. I want to become a sport instructor for disable people. I’ve already started the course. I hope that as an instructor, I will return to Rehabilitation Center. I want to help other people who suddenly became disable and to see the sparks of happiness in their eyes.