1859 Sept | Oct 2018

adventure
Alysia Kezerian’s travels have taken
her around the world, including
Salzburg, Amsterdam, Vienna, Prague
and Bratislava.
Accessible Adventure
Alysia Kezerian may use a wheelchair,
but that’s not stopping her travels
written by Mackenzie Wilson
IF THE LITTLE ENGINE That Could was a person, it would
be Alysia Kezerian. The 24-year-old, from Danville, California,
hasn’t let anything get in the way of her seeing the world, not
even a devastating injury.
In 2015, Kezerian, then a student at the University of Oregon,
was paralyzed from a fall at Smith Rock State Park near
Terrebonne. She was bouldering up a 10-foot rock face and on
the way back down, a section of the rock broke off, sending her
to the ground. Adrenaline dulled her initial understanding of
whether she was hurt. “I thought, oh I didn’t hit my head, I’m
fine,” Kezerian said. “Then I tried to move my legs and I couldn’t.”
It took rescue crews seven hours to get Kezerian out of the
park because of the unforgiving terrain. Before going into
surgery at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, an orthopedic
surgeon told her she shattered her L2 vertebrae. “I remember
just flat out asking, ‘Am I going to walk again?’ He said it was
very unlikely, that I had complete paralysis,” Kezerian said.
Many people would have given up on their dreams of traveling.
Not Kezerian—she has continued traveling internationally,
inspiring other people with limited abilities through her
Instagram page, Wheelies Around the World, to go on adventures
and find ways to keep traveling.
In 2016, she returned to the University of Oregon, but not
for long. She dreamed of studying abroad. The logistics were
an uphill battle, but a counselor helped make it happen. “No
one ever said, ‘This is going to be too hard. Don’t do it,’” she
said. “Everyone was like, ‘This might be hard, but we’re so up
for the challenge.’”
Kezerian traveled internationally before her injury, but knew
it would be different after. She says a lot of the problems that
come up for her while traveling now would surprise able-bodied
people. “The biggest piece with traveling for long periods of
time, for people with spinal cord injuries, is making sure you’re
not sitting on your bum for too long,” Kezerian said. “For some
people, there’s no muscle tissue down there so it’s easy to get
pressure sores.”
She said all airplanes are supposed to have an aisle chair that
can help people who use a wheelchair get on and off the flight
and allow them to have access to the bathroom during the
flight—but in her experience, not everyone is fully trained to use
them. “I personally will just hold it for eleven hours,” Kezerian
said. If that’s not an option, she’ll book a layover to make sure
she has proper access to a bathroom during her travels.
While studying abroad in Vienna, Austria, Kezerian found it
to be more accessible than many places she visited in Europe. “I
stayed in a vacation rental in Paris where there was an elevator,
but it wasn’t wide enough for my chair … my friends were super
resourceful, though. I would stay in the elevator and the boys
would meet me at the top with my chair,” Kezerian said. The
“top” was six flights up. Bathrooms in Europe were a constant
struggle for Kezerian. Most the time they weren’t accessible
and even if they qualified as accessible in the particular place,
Kezerian said the requirements weren’t the same as
in the United States. “Most door widths in the U.S.
are just wide enough to fit the size wheelchair that I
have,” Kezerian said. “In Europe they are way smaller,
92 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2018