Christiansen has learned how to do wheelies, which allow her to maneuver her wheelchair over curbs and bumps.
Dec. 4, 2009
By Emilee Booher
Every day Joanna Christiansen’s legs sit lifeless on her chair, except for an occasional spasm that sends quivering jolts from her hips to her toes.
She can’t feel the spasms. She can’t feel anything on the lower half of her body.
While snowboarding on a clear February afternoon atop of Mount Hood, the 22-year-old Portland State graduate suffered a devastating injury that forever changed her life. She broke her back and crushed her spinal cord, immediately paralyzing her from the waist down.
On average, about 29 people are seriously injured every year from snowboarding or skiing accidents, according to the National Ski Areas Association. For the 2009 season, Christiansen was one of them. Still, she refuses to be defined by the accident or let it it diminish her hopeful outlook on life.
Nine months after the accident, she is learning how to adjust to her life in a wheelchair. She has to start back at the basics: how to use the bathroom, how to bathe, how to roll over in bed, how to tie her shoes—all of the things most people learn as a child. But for Christiansen, the adjustment includes much more than the basics. It includes learning how to start a new life.
“It’s like learning how to use a new body you didn’t get an instruction manual for,” her mother Kathy said.
Looking back, Christiansen remembers well that fateful day.
The view from the top of the mountain was stunning. The deep blue sky painted the colors of the green fur trees and metallic ski lifts even more vibrant. It was almost a perfect snowboarding afternoon, but the harsh Oregon winter left the snow icy and slick.
Lying on the hospital bed in her room, Christiansen remains confident and happy with the new direction her life has taken.
Christiansen and her friend, Joshua, had already boarded down the mountain four times. “Let’s race!” she exclaimed to him before they sliced down a fifth time.
He wasn’t enthused. She raced him anyway.
Always seeking speed and thrill, she flew straight down the mountain with the cold, crisp air swarming her smiling face.
As she zoomed down, she saw a rock in her path rapidly approaching. The rock quickly turned into a boulder. With only a split second to react, Christiansen couldn’t maneuver around it in time, so she tried to jump off it.
The speed she built up on the slippery surface sent her soaring off the rock. Not knowing how to land properly, she plummeted back first into the hard snow. With a combination of painful screams and a number of tumbles, Joanna finally skidded to a stop.
“I immediately knew I was paralyzed,” she said.
The first time Christiansen saw herself sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital, she was startled to see her athletic body confined to a seated position. “In my mind I became one of those people,” she said. “One of the people in wheelchairs.”
The chair is only a fraction of the change she is getting used to.
With almost no movement in her legs, she is persistently finding other ways to keep her blood circulation flowing. Sometimes she picks up each leg one at a time, slightly shakes it and resuscitates it on her chair. Her parents often help stretch her legs to prevent her from having waves of spasms and nerve pain.
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Listen to Joanna in her own words
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Since she can no longer feel the sensation of having to use the restroom, she “caths” herself every three hours, which means she inserts a catheter into her urethra to make herself urinate.
She uses a similar coercive method every few days to empty her bowels. “It’s gross…but after doing it for a month or two, you get used to it,” she said.
Getting from place to place has also become a difficult task for Christiansen. On particularly slow mornings, she stays in bed avoiding the chore of using only her arms to transfer her h
Christiansen's mother, Kathy, stretches her legs to prevent spasms and nerve pain.
alf-limp body onto her chair, a process that has to be repeated every time she needs to take a shower or use the bathroom.
Even with the slower days, Christiansen spends plenty of time outside her home. She drives a car with hand controls attached to the pedals, and she zips around the roads. When no one is around to help her, she disassembles her chair and puts it in and out of her car by herself.
But questions still arise for her: How will she go grocery shopping by herself? How hard will it be for her to live alone? These are the kinds of questions that remain unanswered.
Like Christiansen, her family’s house has also undergone many changes. It has assumed the appearance of a hospital, a physical therapy facility and a home for three.
There is a wooden ramp leading to the front door of the house that her father, Dan, built immediately after her accident. There are odd contraptions throughout the rooms that she uses for various kinds of exercises. There are four-foot piles of medical supplies outside of her bathroom.
And there is a Bible with worn pages sitting on a table in her room.
“People ask me what got me through this…first it was God, then it was my family, then it was my friends,” she said. Her greatest coping mechanism and greatest healer was accepting that God allowed her accident to happen.
“Definitely I’ve learned so many life lessons, I think too early, but…I’m going to use them for someone else who really needs them,” she said.
She frequently visits her old rehabilitation center to talk about her experience with new patients in similar situations.
One of the patients told Christiansen she was worried about looking like a freak.
“Well, when I came in here did you think I was a freak because I’m a girl in a chair?” Christiansen asked her.
“No, you look normal,” the girl said.
“Well that’s what people think of you,” Christiansen told her.
Christiansen graduated from Portland State University in 2008 with a degree in biology and a certificate as an Emergency Medical Technician. Prior to her accident, she had her heart set on working in the fast-paced world of emergency medicine. Now she is planning on pursuing a more feasible career as a physician’s assistant.
Christiansen's pastor visits her every Friday morning to have Bible study and prayer together.
“I just kind of see the importance now of having long-term relationships with people in a hospital setting,” she said.
The weekend after her accident, Christiansen’s three best friends flew from all around the country to be with her. Others filed into the hospital’s waiting room. Nurses comforted her through her tears and uncertainty.
Her relationships with these people will persevere far longer than her physical complications. These relationships keep her strong.
“Now I could care less about people who make fun of me, even in a chair,” she said.
Her adventurous spirit still lives on. “I plan to be snowboarding next year…adaptive snowboarding,” she said. And someday if she has children, she wants them to be on the mountain right next to her.
“It’s about loving your life,” she said. “I have people who love me, and I love people…and that’s so much better than someone who has everything and is unhappy.”
She smiled.
“If you’re happy…then you win.”
