ABOUT ME

This website was designed by C3-4 COMPLETE QUADRIPLEGIC Cassandra Brandt

The most important message I want to convey with this website is simple and honest: this life is manageable, it gets better, and you will discover that for yourself if you don’t give up. Humans are remarkably adaptive—even those of us who are absolutely certain we are not. I know, because I once believed that, too.

Life becomes more complicated. More demanding. More exhausting. But like many difficult things, it can also become deeply meaningful. And while the challenges are undeniable, so many of us in the spinal cord injury community have found this life is still worth living.

I hope you'll find this too.

I was born and raised in rural Arizona, playing in the creek with my brother and helping my dad under the hood of the family car. At 18 I became a mom, leaving for the city shortly after, where I began a career as a structural steelworker. A little over a decade into life as a traveling tradeswoman, I broke my neck.
My injury happened while visiting my hometown for a funeral. Given the dangerous freeways I drove, home was where I felt safe. While visiting home, a childhood friend lost control of her SUV while I was in the passenger seat, not a block from her mom’s house. 

I grabbed the wheel but it was too late. We flipped, and my C4 vertebrae crushed upon landing. There was no pain, but I couldn’t move. No words can describe that moment but you might know it well: the shock, the loss. I knew I had likely broken my neck. But I wanted to live so badly I couldn’t let myself think of what kind of a life it would be like.

I was cut out of the car by the Jaws of Life, lifted out by familiar hometown paramedics, and wheeled on a stretcher to the nearby ball field to meet the helicopter for the flight to the city. 

At HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center a surgeon placed a cage around my crushed C4 vertebra and those adjacent to it. A few days later they performed a tracheostomy. I spent three weeks on a ventilator, six weeks in a skilled nursing facility and then I went to rehabilitation for a month at Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix. 

In rehab I learned to operate a power wheelchair with taps of my head. A month later I rented a place back in my hometown with my brother. I have now been living with complete quadriplegia for eleven years. My teenage daughter took care of me for the first five, I spent four in the institutions, and now I live with my brother again. My daughter has grown and given me beautiful grandchildren and I'm finally in a space where I can pay for care that I need.

I went on to get my master's degree, and published four books. I am involved in advocacy for marginalized communities. I have been published in literary magazines and nominated for literary awards. I opened an LLC to provide coaching for survivors of trauma using philosophy. Everything I accomplished without my hands.

Every quadriplegic has their story. We have more chapters to go, so we help each other through the challenges. I found myself learning so much from other individuals who have been navigating this quad life for longer than I have, and this mentoring has been life-altering.

It is my hope that this little site will reach newly-diagnosed complete quadriplegics and their families, caregivers and therapists, assisting with the journey toward adaptation to living with quadriplegia.
PORTFOLIO OF WORK
MY BOOKS
MY PERSONAL BLOG
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