Today my older nephew told me he saw a video in driver's ed (one of those they show the kids to emphasize safety) where the driver was injured and left with a spinal cord injury. He told me that the guy was not a quadriplegic, but that his spinal cord was affected.
I explained to him that being a paraplegic or a quadriplegic is a matter of where the injury is on the spinal cord. The spinal cord is sectioned off into levels such as C for cervical, T for thoracic and L for lumbar, and S for sacral. According to Wikipedia,
"There are 31 spinal cord segments:
8 cervical segments
12 thoracic segments
5 lumbar segments
5 sacral segments
1 coccygeal segment"
The higher the injury, the greater the loss of function; however, the injury varies depending on whether it is a complete/incomplete injury.
Click above for a chart describing the functional goals for various levels of spinal cord injury.
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