Nov 8, 2005 By Patty Yauger 4 min read

CONNELLSVILLE – Darius Carlens was an 18-year-old senior in high school when he decided to get into the back seat of a car being driven by a friend that had been drinking. The consequences of the decision that day nearly 20 years ago left him paralyzed.

On Monday, as he sat in a wheelchair, he shared his experience with Connellsville Area Senior High School students, hoping his message would prevent them from making the same mistake.

“He was going too fast and I didn’t have my seat belt on,” said Carlens. “We ended up crashing into a tree.”

In addition to suffering a spinal cord injury, Carlens also sustained a broken back in the accident. He spent more than three months in a rehabilitation center and a nearly a year trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

Carlens, now the coordinator of the “Think First” injury prevention program at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, said that teens and young adults are the most likely victims of spinal and brain injuries because they are in the age bracket that tends to take risks.

“High school years are the fun time of your life,” he told the students. “Unfortunately, it is the time when you put yourself in high-risk situations.”

Although he is confined to a wheelchair, Carlens said he has learned to live independently. He has a vehicle that is equipped with features that allows him to drive and is active with the Pittsburgh Steelwheelers basketball team.

“I consider myself lucky,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Spinal cord and brain injuries cannot be repaired, said Diane Canella, a registered nurse at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh who accompanied Carlens.

“We can put a lot of different injuries back together again, but the injuries we have no ability to fix is the brain and the spinal cord,” said Canella. “The injury you come in to the hospital with is the injury you are going to leave the hospital with; we cannot fix or undo either one of these injuries.”

Canella said 10,000 people walking today will be in a wheelchair next year. One person, every hour of every day in the U.S. sustains a spinal cord injury. One person every 20 seconds in the U.S. sustains a brain injury – totaling nearly 500,000 victims.

“The saddest statistic is that 80 percent of the injuries are preventable,” she said. “The injuries happen to people that think they can get away with something that they’ve gotten away with in the past; they don’t wear a seat belt or a helmet.”

The most common injury is the hyperflexion of the spine, a forward movement that overextends the spine. It is often caused during a vehicle accident, Canella said.

“Car crashes are the number one cause of spinal cord injuries and brain injuries,” she said.

If the crash victim is not wearing a seat belt, Canella added, they will continue to move forward through a windshield or striking a steering wheel, dashboard or another seat. A hyperflexion injury also can occur when an athlete poised with their back bent and head down, strike another person or a hard surface.

Gunshot wounds that pierce the spinal cord or spine cause the second-most common trauma spinal injury.

Other spinal injuries include the hyperextension of the spine or the backward overextension of the spine and the compression fracture of the spine. The hyperextension occurs when a victim falls backward and strikes a hard surface while a compression fracture can occur if the victim falls or jumps from a high elevation to the ground.

Any break to the spinal cord causes paralysis from the point of the injury through the lower extremities, said Canella, and likely will impact bowel, bladder and sexual functions.

“One of the most dangerous consequences of a spinal injury is to lose the ability to feel pain,” she said. “Pain is a protective mechanism.”

Brain injuries, she added, can affect speech, vision, balance, memory and walking.

“We are not trying to tell you not to drive a car, play sports or go swimming,” said Canella. “We only get one brain and one spinal cord in our lifetime. If we injure them, they are injured for the rest of our lives; there is nothing anyone in any hospital can do to undo brain damage or spinal cord damage.”