. 2020 Apr 17;6:23. doi: 10.1038/s41394-020-0267-8

Table 3.

Managing social support theme examples by case and study.

	Study 1 (2002–04)	Study 2 (2014–15)
Mary	…sometimes your family can be so loving and so supportive that they really hamper your growth or your progress … They don’t want to see you struggle or to see you suffer to accomplish what you have to accomplish. And my dad literally started crying and says, “Daughter don’t do this! You don’t have to do this. We’re going to take care of you…” But I told him that this was just something that I wanted to do, even if I couldn’t do it the way that I used to do it… if I continued to let everybody do it for me all the time, I would never do it myself….	Even recently I got some dysreflexia cards and gave them to all the members of family, my daughter, my sister, all my brothers, my father. Most of them are out of state, but I want them to know if I’m there and these kinds of things start to happen this is what you need to do. I’ve been able to just be open about everything… I mean it’s a part of you. I always say to people, your disability does not define who you are, but it’s just a matter of letting people know what that all involves. So why should I not make them aware and make them knowledgeable?
Ruth	[My family are] all very open about helping me with my care… They understand the physiology behind the injury and, as a matter of fact, all were taught to cath me. Especially my sister has learned how to cath and do the bowel program because she felt it was very important. …there were a ton of things I did because [my husband] did not want to be reminded of the injury… So, his way of dealing with it was to ignore as much of it as he could. So, I was very secretive. I would not use the word “cath.” That word was not to be spoken. If we were in the bathroom and I was draining my leg bag, I didn’t want the sound of the water entering into the toilet.	I did have [a peer counselor]… and he was able to tell me, “Yeah, it gets better in time. You’ll be able to stay in the chair more than a couple of hours without feeling like you’re going to die.” I think peer counseling is probably one of the most helpful things that any individual with a spinal cord injury or traumatic injury can have. It just gave me the opportunity. [My insurance company] offered to pay for my master’s to go back to school, and then of course [my mentor], when I wanted to stop and not go back to school, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She wanted me to get my PhD and so she really pushed to get that training fellowship…

Study 1 (2002–04)

Study 2 (2014–15)

Mary

…sometimes your family can be so loving and so supportive that they really hamper your growth or your progress … They don’t want to see you struggle or to see you suffer to accomplish what you have to accomplish.

And my dad literally started crying and says, “Daughter don’t do this! You don’t have to do this. We’re going to take care of you…” But I told him that this was just something that I wanted to do, even if I couldn’t do it the way that I used to do it… if I continued to let everybody do it for me all the time, I would never do it myself….

Even recently I got some dysreflexia cards and gave them to all the members of family, my daughter, my sister, all my brothers, my father. Most of them are out of state, but I want them to know if I’m there and these kinds of things start to happen this is what you need to do.

I’ve been able to just be open about everything… I mean it’s a part of you. I always say to people, your disability does not define who you are, but it’s just a matter of letting people know what that all involves. So why should I not make them aware and make them knowledgeable?

Ruth

[My family are] all very open about helping me with my care… They understand the physiology behind the injury and, as a matter of fact, all were taught to cath me. Especially my sister has learned how to cath and do the bowel program because she felt it was very important.

…there were a ton of things I did because [my husband] did not want to be reminded of the injury… So, his way of dealing with it was to ignore as much of it as he could. So, I was very secretive. I would not use the word “cath.” That word was not to be spoken. If we were in the bathroom and I was draining my leg bag, I didn’t want the sound of the water entering into the toilet.

I did have [a peer counselor]… and he was able to tell me, “Yeah, it gets better in time. You’ll be able to stay in the chair more than a couple of hours without feeling like you’re going to die.” I think peer counseling is probably one of the most helpful things that any individual with a spinal cord injury or traumatic injury can have.

It just gave me the opportunity. [My insurance company] offered to pay for my master’s to go back to school, and then of course [my mentor], when I wanted to stop and not go back to school, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She wanted me to get my PhD and so she really pushed to get that training fellowship…