Abstract

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes widespread disorders in the sensory, motor, mental, and sexual systems. This injury imposes a significant burden on the healthcare system during the first 5 years. Previous relevant researches have rarely focused on SCI in women. Quantitative research methods lack the capacity and capability to address such issues. Therefore, we wanted to evaluate the experiences of SCI women in the first 5 years of injury using content analysis method. METHODS This was a qualitative study with conventional content analysis approach. Purposeful sampling was performed on 6 female SCI patients. Data was collected through indepth semi-structured interviews. The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. Content analysis was used to reduce the data, name the data, obtain analytical codes, and finally detect the theme. RESULTS Analysis of the data collected from the participants resulted in the extraction of 4 themes and 2 sub-themes including, bitter memory of physical sufferings, emotional bitterness of a numb body, struggle to keep on living, and paradoxical forces of life (inhibitors and facilitators). CONCLUSIONS Investigating the experiences of SCI women in the first 5 years of injury showed that SCI causes these women to suffer from various physical sufferings, and experience many bitter feelings despite physical numbness. However, despite these bitter experiences, these women are struggling to keep on living, but there are facilitators and inhibitors and these women are struggling to control these inhibitors by relying on facilitators and to get through these bitter events by their own efforts. Therefore, struggle to get through the bitterness of life can be considered as the essence of the experience of SCI women in the first 5 years after injury in the present study.