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Paralysis: all in all, a complete bastard of a word.

The human skeleton is designed to protect your core nervous system at all costs: the vertebrae link like chain-armour around it, grow bony spikes on the outside to foil intruders. The spinal cord is the wiring from central command and control; it is the engine of your free will; the power and pleasure of your flesh. When the spinal cord is damaged, it is indeed like a nuclear attack, the ultimate hit. Your body does everything it can in defence: it shuts down, retreats into itself, sends fluid to the site of the injury. Every resource available goes to the core and the extremities get forgotten about. The surface of your hands and feet become thickened and leathery with excess skin. Your heart rate slows, you start to retain litres of water and swell all over. The body remains in a state of suspended animation for four to six weeks, during which time accurate diagnosis of the extent of your injury can be impossible. Some weeks after my accident a deep ridge started to emerge from the cuticles at the bottom of my fingernails and slowly grew its way up: a tremor in my body’s rock stratum; a record of the geological seismic shock within me.