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Your Bowel<br />
Immediately following a spinal cord injury<br />
your bowel will be flaccid, that is, lacking<br />
muscle movement. Your intestines will<br />
still continue to function, processing food<br />
and absorbing nutrients. Depending on<br />
your level of injury you will either develop<br />
a reflex bowel, or your bowel may continue<br />
to be flaccid<br />
Reflex Bowel<br />
If your injury is above T12 your bowel<br />
will probably empty by a reflex action.<br />
With spinal cord impairment the feelings<br />
to indicate that the rectum is full are not<br />
able to reach the brain, but they will reach<br />
the spinal cord. As the rectum gets full<br />
and stretches it pushes on the nerves in<br />
the bowel. This causes a sensory signal to<br />
be sent from the bowel through the sacral<br />
nerves to the spinal cord. The signal then<br />
loops back down along the sacral nerves to<br />
the bowel muscles. At this point you would<br />
have a bowel motion.<br />
Flaccid Bowel<br />
If your lesion is at L1 or below, the bowel<br />
will probably not have a reflex action. This<br />
is because the spinal cord ends at around L1<br />
so any signals from the rectal nerves cannot<br />
loop along the sacral nerves to the spinal<br />
cord. This means that the bowel muscles<br />
will not squeeze and the rectal sphincter<br />
muscle stays loose.<br />
You will probably need to learn differen<br />
ways of managing your food intake<br />
and bowel movements. A good bowel<br />
management program will help you regain<br />
some control and keep you healthier.<br />
See the Bowel chapter for more<br />
information on this area.<br />
Your Bladder<br />
'Taking a pee’ is one of the most common<br />
body care activities we undertake, passing<br />
urine is the end part of a simple but<br />
important body process. The body’s urinary<br />
system spends all of its time monitoring the<br />
amount of water and wastes in your body.<br />
It is the ‘oil filte ’ of the body, keeping your<br />
lifeblood clean and running smoothly.<br />
A spinal cord impairment will affect your<br />
ability to pee in some way. Any impairment,<br />
no matter how minor, will affect part of your<br />
‘chain of command’. However, there are<br />
a number of different bladder management<br />
techniques that will allow you to gain<br />
control over your bladder function.<br />
Learning good bladder management<br />
techniques is important to help keep you<br />
free from infections, bladder and kidney<br />
stones, and other complications both now<br />
and in the long term.<br />
See the Bladder chapter for<br />
more information on this area.<br />
“Don’t let things get in your way<br />
from doing something just because you<br />
don’t think you can do it. Try as many<br />
different ways to do something, in the<br />
end you will find a way to do it that<br />
works well after the 100’s of attempts<br />
that didn’t work. Doing the buttons up<br />
on my jeans took me 30 mins the first<br />
time, 20 the second and now it only<br />
takes about 25 seconds. It took a long<br />
time to figure out how but now it is so<br />
simple. I have struggled initially but<br />
now I can do almost anything.”<br />
Tim Johnson C6/7<br />
© New Zealand Spinal Trust, 2014<br />
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