Daily Life with a C4/C5 Spinal Cord Injury

It’s an early start! Holiday PA’s stayed over with us so we can all leave together.

2 of our lovely PA’s arrived at 0545 to start the morning routine: disconnecting nights bags, shower, wash, moisturise, dress, stretches and into wheelchair. Takes about an hour.

Ready to set off at 0700 and the PA’s stayed behind for an hour to change bed, clean bathroom etc. 

We have such an amazing team!

3-4 hour journey, but preferably we don’t stop, so dad has a night catheter bag. If not we’d be stopping every 30 minutes!!!

Finally, around 11am we arrive at the port.  Straight into accessible spaces with ABParking on the dockside. It’s always a little faff now with the excitement of getting onboard quickly versus the logistics of night bag & suitcases etc. Parking on dockside has a huge benefit to us. Staff come and collect your checked cases from the car. So much easier when you’re also managing extra bags with medical equipment & disabilities.  Advice though, book your parking early, it gets booked up fairly quickly.

Wheelchair users and their party are given priority and we’re waved through to a new check in desk opening for us. Always really helpful staff guiding us all the way.

Access on to the ship is super easy. Plenty of space, lifts and ramps. Staff always on hand when boarding and disembarking with wheelchair. 

That’s it we’re onboard and ready for safety brief, champagne and drop hand luggage to our stateroom. RELAX 🥂

Stateroom – accessible rooms get booked up quickly. When booking always check what the cruise lines version of ‘accessible’ is! Celebrity verandah and aqua cabins are fairly spacious with roll in shower.  However, with a hospital bed, manual hoist and the need to move and handle, it’s quite tight on space.  Ideally, we’d have a Sky Suite for dad as this has extra floor space, but, as you can imagine, a suite come at a high price. 

Once in the room the holiday PA’s unpack the medical case, dads case and check all the equipment from Mobility at Sea is working. 

That’s it, we’re ready to sail!