About Me

My name is Heath Bartels-Waller, I’m 25 and, until August 2008, I lived a full and active life working as an interstate truck driver, being a husband and father, and pursuing interests in music and art.

Then, on the 26th of August 2008 at 2:20pm, I became a quadriplegic in a semi-trailer rollover near Mackay in Queensland, Australia. After stabilization in Rockhampton, I was airlifted to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, where I underwent surgery to repair my spine which had broken at the C5 level. Amazingly, this was really the only injury I received! I then spent 12 days in ICU and 3 weeks in the PA’s spinal unit before being transferred to the Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Center in Melbourne, which is much closer to home. I spent the next 5 months there with daily nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy to help me learn to live with this new condition.

While I thank everyone at the Talbot for their help, unfortunately they are working in an extremely old-fashioned and outdated system that is way out of touch with modern research and technology. You are taught that ‘this is it now, so get used to it’. While they really have no way of telling what your outcome will be, they are determined not to get your hopes up so as not to cause disappointment. What they don’t realise is, this can take away hope as well, which is the cruelest thing they can do. It is this attitude and lack of knowledge that makes the term ‘rehabilitation’ quite inaccurate. At Alcholics Anonymous, you don’t get taught how to live the rest of your life while drunk, do you?

Even just 10 minutes spent searching on the internet will bring a wealth of new treatments, techniques, methods, research, trials, products and technology in the area of Spinal Cord Injury, with some incredible people devoting their time to finding a way to help and heal people of this debilitating injury. I will endeavour to put as many links up as I can on this site, to bring this information out and make it common knowledge. So feel free to let me know of anything you find or have found, because the more the merrier!

I have never felt that this condition is for long, just ‘for now’, so I plan on pursuing treatments overseas in 2010 to get back to my former self and get back to my life! These include stem-cell treatments in India and Project Walk in the USA. Both are relatively long term treatments that will involve long periods of time spent overseas, so that’s why I decided to start this site and keep anyone interested up-to-date with what’s happening.

I am lucky to have the support and care of my beautiful wife Candice and gorgeous little daughter Izabella, as well as a fantastic family around us to help in any way they can, be it next door or on the other side of the world. This has brought us all together and I’m so grateful to them for all they’ve done. Also, our small community of Holbrook has been awesome, not only with it’s incredible fundraising efforts, but also with the generosity of locals to drop in a meal or work in the backyard. I can’t thank everyone enough!

I hope people enjoy this site and tell others about it, as many as possible! There is a whole world out there that everyone needs to know about, not only for our sake but for their own, to not only know the possible outcomes of accidents or diseases, but the risks of not thinking and bad decisions. Yes, I did my injury with an out-of-control 45 ton semi-trailer, but when you hear stories of people who did their injuries falling out of bed or tripping over pet leads, it puts it in a bit more perspective. I would never of known had I not suffered this injury, and I think it’s important that the world has a better knowledge of Spinal Cord Injury.

If you’re reading this, then thank you so much for visiting and please tell your friends about this site! Fellow quad’s and para’s, please post your stories and experiences! And again, ABSOLUTELY ANYONE AND EVERYONE, feel free to suggest or send links, post comments or visit the guestbook, contact me, and generally interact.