Girls Just Gotta’ Have Fun: Creating a Unique Program for Girls with Spinal Cord Injury
Sara J. Klaas, MSW, C-ASWCM and Kally Schneider, BA
Sustaining a spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating event and it is particularly tragic for a child or an adolescent who has barely had an opportunity to experience life. Of the approximately 10,000 individuals who sustain spinal cord injury each year in the United States, three to five percent occur in individuals younger than fifteen years of age and approximately twenty percent occur in those younger than twenty years of age (Nobunaga, Go, & Karunas, 1999).
Among adolescents and adults with SCI, approximately eighty percent are males, but the preponderance of males becomes less marked as age of injury decreases, with females equaling males in those injured at five years of age and younger (Vogel, 1996). For boys or girls, sustaining a spinal cord injury during childhood or adolescence can have a significant impact on development. Adjustment to such a catastrophic event may be difficult and requires a breadth of support from rehabilitation professionals. This support often comes in unique and creative programs that can be developed in the pediatric setting. One such new and exciting program geared toward girls with SCI has “GLAHM” written all over it……
Being a teenage girl in today’s society is tough. School is competitive, classmates can be cruel, hormones are raging, and the pressure to be thin and beautiful is outrageous. Now, try to imagine how hard it would be to face these issues from a wheelchair. That circumstance is the reality for girls like Jessica Greenfield.
The summer before her senior year in high school, Jessica was practicing her form, with her diving coach when she landed on her neck and became paralyzed from the mid-chest-level down. Among her friends, Jess had always been known as happy-go-lucky, outgoing, motivated, and full of life, but after her injury, things changed. Like many who sustain spinal cord injury, Jessica was in a state of depression. She knew she might never walk, run or even feel sensation again.
It wasn’t long before Jessica came to Shriners Hospital, Chicago for rehabilitation, and things started to look up. Jessica says she clearly remembers the first day she actually felt like herself again-the day she finally changed out of her sweatpants, curled her hair, and put on some make-up. “I felt like a girl again… I looked good and I felt good for the first time in months,” she says. Jessica proposed to provide that experience for other girls who had sustained spinal cord injuries and the idea for GLAHM (Good Life and Healthy Mind) Camp was born.
Jessica had participated in many of the unique programs offered at Shriners Hospital; she had attended a week-long sports and conditioning camp and even became a certified SCUBA diver through a travel adventure program Shriners Hospital offers with the Diveheart Foundation. But Jessica felt something was lacking for the “girlie girls.” She envisioned a camp designed to inform and empower girls who have sustained spinal cord injuries. Her goal was to bring a group of these girls together and put them through beauty boot camp for the body, mind, and spirit; to encourage them to live balanced lives and embrace their femininity by managing their personal appearance, ensuring proper nutrition, and enhancing fitness and psychosocial health.
In partnership with Shriners and many sponsors, the camp was specifically designed to help girls regain self-confidence, enhance self-esteem and empower them to live good lives. The inaugural camp offered six teenage girls with SCI a week in the city where looking good and feeling good became their motto. The itinerary for the week included seminars on health, nutrition, body-image, and self-esteem offered by Shriners Hospital’s clinical dietician, social worker, and psychologist. A fashion in-service was provided by a former Shriners Hospital patient with a high level spinal cord injury who recently completed a degree in fashion design and is involved in theater costuming. The girls each had individual fitness consultations provided by personal trainers from a local fitness center. “Each trainer made a specialized program for each girl with different ideas, techniques, and exercises based on each girl’s level of injury,” noted Jessica. As the girls began to feel healthy on the inside, the outside aspects of GLAHM took over. The girls spent an entire day at a local salon having their hair cut and colored. They each worked with a stylist-not only to discuss the best look but also to learn how to best transfer to the shampoo bowl or get into the styling chair. Makeovers were the next line of defense as the girls learned about good overall skin care and how to use make-up to enhance their natural beauty. As their confidence soared, the girls enjoyed dinners at various Chicago restaurants where they learned about good etiquette and how to order healthy meals from restaurant menus.
With new hairstyles and makeovers complete, the group attended a performance of the musical, Wicked, which was perhaps the perfect way to end GLAHM Camp as the musical has a strong focus on inner versus outer beauty and portrays a young woman in a wheelchair as “tragically beautiful.” This allowed these campers to reflect on society’s view of women in wheelchairs and the importance of advocacy until the world learns that they are simply “beautiful.” As Jessica said, “I hope that all the girls go home with a really good feeling and that they feel more confident and better about themselves and better in their communities.”
Jessica’s brainchild is now an annual program at Shriners in Chicago, where motivational speakers and group discussions, as well as peer networking, have become essential components. Activities continue to include personal training, nutrition education, skin care essentials, salon treatments, meditation, healthy living seminars, and a night at the theater.
GLAHM camp offers the perfect reminder for young girls with SCI that “you are the same person on the inside,” and that embracing your femininity may be one wonderful and unique way to feel more beautiful and more confident!
For more information on GLAHM Camp or other programs offered by Shriners Hospital for Children, Chicago, contact Sara J. Klaas, MSW, C-ASWCM, at 773-385-5448.
References
Nobunaga, A. I., Go, B. K., & Karunas, R.B. (1999) Recent demographic and injury trends in people served by the Model Spinal Cord Injury Care Systems. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 80. 1372–1382.
Vogel, L. C. (1996): Medical management of pressure ulcers. In: The child with a spinal cord injury, (Eds: R. Betz & M. Mulcahey) pp. 293-304. Rosemont, Ill: American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons