In 2004 during a business trip, Kim woke up one morning and her right foot was tingly. Three hours later, she couldn’t move anything below her waist. “I thought I probably had pinched a nerve. I kept expecting my lower body to wake up, and everything be all right,” shares Kim.
But that’s not what happened. After tests were done in the hospital, a doctor told Kim she had transverse myelitis, a non-traumatic spinal cord injury. Kim knew nothing about the condition, and at the time could find very little information on transverse myelitis. What she did find, she describes as “very depressing.” After she was released from the hospital, Kim says that she started going to Shepherd Center where a new world opened up to her.
“I didn’t see any handicap parking signs, because about everyone there had some type of disability. That really helped me see that there were plenty of people like me.”
At Shepherd Center, Kim got involved in sports like wheelchair rugby, tennis, and hand cycling. She also began looking into research being done for her condition, and even got involved with one study happening at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. “I work very closely with that research facility today and do all I can to help raise money for it to learn more about what the disease is,” Kim says.
Kim says she was fairly active before she got transverse myelitis, but now, her activity level has skyrocketed. Since her diagnosis, Kim says “I’ve been sky diving, and zip lining at 150 feet off the ground. Then, I’ve rappelled 60-feet down from where the zip line ended.”
“When you go through a traumatic experience like I have, and your life changes so quickly, I think you really want to do everything that you’ve ever wanted to do.”
Kim is certainly living up to that statement!
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