A resource built from lived experience — because the information that actually helps people with spinal cord injuries doesn't come from grants and committees. It comes from people who've been there.
When you or someone you love gets a spinal cord injury, you enter a world with a lot of clinical information and very little practical wisdom. The medical websites explain what a neurogenic bladder is. They don't tell you that Magic Bullet suppositories work twice as fast as standard bisacodyl, or that hydrophilic catheters dramatically reduce UTI frequency, or that the burning pain in your arms after a central cord injury is real and neurological and often undertreated, or that a warm shower every morning does more for spasticity than many people's medications.
The knowledge that actually changes people's lives lives in communities — in forum posts, in conversations between survivors, in the hard-won trial-and-error of people who've been managing SCI for years. SCI.help exists to collect that knowledge, organize it, and make it findable by the person who just left the ICU and doesn't know where to start.
My name is Jason Moore, and I live with an incomplete cervical spinal cord injury (C3-5) - and I have central cord syndrome. I built SCI.help because I know how difficult it is to find useful information.
In July 2022 I crashed my mountain bike in Whistler, Canada, and broke my neck. The injury runs from C3 to C5 — I had a laminectomy across those levels and I'm fused from C2 to C7. Although my injury was "incomplete", I was quadriplegic for the first couple of months. I left inpatient rehab in a power wheelchair I drove with my head, because my hands didn't work at all.
Then, slowly, my legs started returning around two months. I was standing at five months, feeding myself by nine, and roughly eighteen months out I was living independently again. If you're early in this and terrified, I want you to know that recovery like that is real. I also want to be honest that it's partial and unpredictable, and that "independent" is not the same as "back to normal."
Here's where I've actually landed: I'll most likely have a suprapubic catheter for the rest of my life, and my bowel program runs on Magic Bullets (Amazon sells disposable applicators!). Below my neck I can't feel much except a constant burning (neuropathy). I have scar tissue around my torso from being bedridden that pinches nerves in my hips, but I found a nerve stimulator from Curonix that makes the pain livable. My hands work about 50% - both pinky fingers have contracted because we didn't move them enough when I was unable to (I had gloves from Amazon that opened and closed my hands but my pinkies didn't fit!). I get gnarly spasms every morning the moment I wake up and start to move (baclofen helps but it wears off around 2am), and after roughly a year bedridden I'm still working to stretch everything back out. I currently take methadone & Lyrica for the pain - it helps a little. You will develop a tolerance for gabapentin after 12-18 months, so be cognizant of that. I don't say any of that for sympathy — it's just the real texture of life with this injury, and it's exactly the kind of thing this site is here to talk about honestly.
What I remember most about the early days isn't the medical side — it's the uncertainty... where do I even begin?! The doctors could tell me what Central Cord Syndrome was, but nobody told me about suprapubic catheters, Magic Bullets, spinal cord stimulators, or that you have to keep moving your muscles and joints or they will lock up! I learned almost all of it the hard way: from trial and error, and from getting things wrong first.
SCI.help is the resource I wish someone had handed me on day one. Everything here combines published clinical research with that hard-won lived experience. When the site describes what central cord syndrome actually feels like, or what it takes to fight an insurance company for the right rehab facility, that isn't paraphrased from a paper — it's lived. My goal is simple: make the things that took me years to learn take the next person an afternoon.
This is a work in progress, built in the open, and it gets better every time someone in the community shares what worked for them. If that's you, I'd genuinely love your help.
We tell you what works and what doesn't — not what sounds hopeful. Recovery from SCI is real and meaningful, and it is also hard and incomplete. Both things are true.
We respect clinical evidence and cite it. We also know that no amount of academic literature substitutes for the person who's been doing IC for 10 years telling you which catheter they use.
We disclose affiliate links. We never let a company's money influence what we recommend. The community decides what's good, not advertisers.
Newly injured, 20 years post-injury, caregiver, family member. Every injury level, every age, every background. This is for all of you.
SCI.help aims to be a complete resource for life with spinal cord injury:
Growing continuously. Topics still being developed include legal and financial navigation, caregiver resources, accessible housing, adaptive driving, sexual health, parenting with SCI, and more. If there's a gap, tell us in the forum.
SCI.help provides general health information for educational purposes. Nothing on this site constitutes medical advice. Spinal cord injury management is highly individual — what works for one person may be wrong for another. Always discuss significant health decisions with your care team, ideally a physician with SCI expertise.
That said: information is not medical advice, and the lack of information is its own kind of harm. We believe people with SCI deserve to understand their condition, their options, and the evidence — so they can have better conversations with their doctors and make informed decisions about their own care.
For details on how we write, source, review, date, and correct our content — and our process for clinical review — see our Editorial & Review Policy.
SCI.help is free and always will be. It's funded by voluntary community support, affiliate links on equipment pages (disclosed), and eventually provider directory listings.
If this site has helped you — or someone you love — consider supporting it so we can keep building. There are no ads here and never will be; community support is what keeps the lights on.
Have a correction, want to contribute an article, or share your experience? Use the community forum or the contact form below.
If you're an SCI-specialized clinician (physiatrist, PT, OT, urologist, etc.) who wants to review content for accuracy, we'd love to hear from you.
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