So you’re a paraplegic. Now what?

Posted on 17 June 2014

In April 2009, musician Mathys Roets suffered a life-changing back injury that left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But through Rollin In, a wheelchair road-racing group he co-founded with his friend Pieter Pretorius, he’s challenging the limits of life as a paraplegic.

‘I’m just inspired by life, by what’s out there to do, to experience, to explore. Music-wise, I’m inspired when I listen to a new song or a new singer and I think “I want to do that” or “I want to try that”. The same applies to being in a wheelchair: if you just sit there and don’t do anything, you’ll just dream. For me, the more I do, the more I want to do.

‘If you can do 5km in a wheelchair, you can probably do 10km. If you can do 10km, you can do 21km. Most wheelchair users think it’s impossible to do 10km in a wheelchair. But it isn’t. And when you realise that, everything changes. The more you do, the more you can do. At Rollin In, we’re trying to change that perception – not just among able-bodied people, but among ourselves too, and for the guy who wakes up in hospital and wonders, “Where to now?”. Every run we do, there’s 4 000 or 5 000 people running with us and without being pessimistic about it, the chances are good that in the next year or two, somebody in that race, who saw what we’re doing, might be in the same position as us, in a wheelchair. Surely that will give people hope, to think: if they’re able to do it, then I can do it as well.

‘That’s one of the things that keeps me going. Immediately after the accident, when I became aware of the fact that I was paraplegic, one of the first things I did was to try to make peace with what I can’t do any more. Then I started looking forward to the new stuff. It’s always nice to learn new things, and I immediately started to focus on that.’

Read his full story in Mediclinic Family magazine.

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