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Can tetraplegics/quadriplegics have sex |
It's often thought by many people that once you suffer a spinal cord injury, nothing works below the location of your injury. To a certain extent this is true. If you suffer a serious spinal cord injury to the neck, your legs are definitely going to be completely paralysed, you will also suffer paralysis in other parts of the body such as fingers, muscles in your torso etc. However, even though you may not have any movements in your body, that does not mean you are not able to engage in sexual activities. In fact, many disabled people are in relationships with able bodied people and have reasonably good sex lives.
Now, let's not kid ourselves, if you do have a spinal cord injury, then the chances are, you're going to have limited, to no feeling below the level of injury. If you were sexually active before your accident, you must understand that things are going to be very different. The lack of feeling is obviously going to make a difference when it comes to oral, penetrative sex. You are not going to be able to feel what is going on. You may be able to ejaculate but you won't get the same feelings as you would have done when you were able bodied.
Another question a lot of male disabled people get asked is "can you still get a hard on?" in many cases, the answer to that question is "yes". Remember that it's not just mind control that enables you to get an erection. Even though you may not have any feelings in your genital area, you may only need stimulation to maintain an erection. Obviously the drawback to this is you may need to keep stimulating yourself to maintain that erection. There are various products around that can help keep you erect. These include things like Cock rings. You must be careful when using products like this, because you may not have any feeling, it's very easy to cause damage to the skin so use them with caution and don't keep these things on for too long.
One of the best ways to maintain an erection is to use drugs. Probably the best known of these drugs is Viagra. A lot of disabled people use these type of drugs with great success. However, you must never start taking drugs such as Viagra without consulting your doctor first. You've got to remember that a lot of these drugs can alter your blood pressure. When you are disabled, especially if you suffer from tetraplegia, you might already suffer bouts of autonomic dysreflexia from time to time. Even though you may have never suffered this condition, taking drugs like Viagra may bring it on. And believe me, the headache that are connected to autonomic dysreflexia are extremely painful. Even having sex for a period of time can increase the chances of an attack. So my advice would be take it slowly, don't spend hours with an erection. There's nothing worse than a mind blowing headache to spoil the whole day.
Before you do engage in any penetrative sex, you might be best trying to empty your bladder as much as possible. Obviously if you are not able to use a catheter to do this task then tapping your bladder is the next best thing. I shouldn't get too worried though, as long as you don't have a urinary tract infection, you're not going to cause any harm if you do pass some water slightly during sex. It really does depend on how your partner feels about you passing urine. Whereas some people just don't want that kind of thing going on during sex, other partners will not bother about it at all.
I just covered this subject briefly, I don't think I need to go into great detail about having sex, that just isn't necessary. As long as you know that a large majority of disabled people are perfectly capable of having sex then you can make the rules up from there
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 15 March 2008 )
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