Victoria Arlen Quotes

If you have two weeks of no feeling in your leg, you start to wonder, 'Will it ever return?'

I have a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which has affected my growth and bone strength. In short, people with the kind of OI I have generally experience hundreds of fractures in their lifetime and use wheelchairs for mobility.

I feel pain everywhere. A lot of guys in chairs do feel their legs. But if you don't, there's a thing called disreflex, so you know if something happens, say, you can't feel your foot or your leg and your body reacts. You know something's not right and you survey what's going on.

I had polio when I was 13. I started feeling stiff, my joints ached, and over a two-week period I lost my coordination and 20 pounds.

With a spinal cord injury, which most people don't really know about... there are many, many complications that actually lead you through your life, and sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.

It's damage to a nerve. It pretty much shut down the whole lower part of my left leg. I wasn't able to step anymore. It's called foot drop - basically, you can't lift your foot.

It started off with flu-like symptoms and pain; then, I started feeling really funny. In two weeks, I was paralyzed from the waist down, and it spiraled down from there. Every ability I had was slowly slipping away.

It's really tough when you have back injury because you cannot bend; you cannot react at the balls.

I haven't felt my toes on my foot on the right side for many years, and my fingers are numb all the time every day.

My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes to numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering.

ALS does not affect cognitive process. Stephen Hawking, one of smartest people on the planet, has ALS. It rarely affects the eyes. It doesn't affect senses like hearing, taste and touch.

I'm lucky the arthritis happened at the time that it did because of the record.

I've had 36 orthopedic operations, have two fused ankles, my knees, hands and wrists don't work, I now have a fused spine, other than that, everything is great.

I can't dance anymore. Total knee replacements. I can't do anything anymore.

I can't really walk well. The muscles don't get the electronic signals from my brain, not that there's anything wrong with the muscles themselves. It's just my brain.

Just ask anybody who is getting old - everything starts hurting. For me, it's my shoulders, thumbs, knees and feet.

I got what they called a diabetic stroke. Here's what it is, my left hand and my left leg. You know when your leg falls asleep? It's like that constantly. It's not painful, but it's so annoying. My leg is all tingly and my arm is all tingly.

Even now with the operation, with the damage done, my ankle probably is never going to be back to 100 per cent.

My spine healed incorrectly. There were long periods when I'd be perfectly all right, and then there were many other times when I wasn't, when my back would give out and throw me down to the floor amid waves of nauseating pain.

For many years my inherited arthritis had given me problems.

The worst part about ALS is that one day, you're able to brush your teeth; then you'll never be able to brush your teeth again. One day, you're able to walk - you're never going to walk again.

I've had versions of disability my whole life, first with my hearing and then when I couldn't walk for over a year.

I wasn't able to explode, jump, run - not even walk without pain being in the back of my leg. Every time I bent my leg, even in a walking motion, I was wondering what was wrong with me. But I stuck with it.

I left football, and overnight, I couldn't walk. I wet the bed even though the bathroom was only three meters away. It was 4 A.M., and I knew if I stood, my ankle would kill me.

I use an electric wheelchair because I have no sense of balance, and muscle spasticity has arched my spine like a cat's, while my legs are really just for show.