“It’s All About the Story”….A Dive into the World of Ali: Adventure, Pain, Promise and Most of All….Love.
PUSHLiving Introduces Ali Ingersoll, who will be sharing her stories with us, shining a light into a world that many can relate to, some will be in awe of, and others will learn to cherish.
About Ali
When I was sitting in jail in subzero temperatures in Northern China at 17 years old I could have never fathomed I would be laying in a hospital bed in the ICU back in China almost 15 years later — mind you I woke up tied to my bed and intubated from life or death spinal surgery!
Hi, Folks, my name is Ali and the dichotomy of my life at 33 years old often leaves me in complete amazement that I am a quadriplegic with more than nine lives it would seem.
As far back as I can remember I was always the girl who was crazy, quirky, adventurous and above all a constant scientist in my own life … testing my limits to see how far life would take me.
In 2010, at 27 years old, when I was living in our family home in the Bahamas I was embarking on a new life adventure to become a Financial Day Trader. I had no idea the next adventure in life would leave me paralyzed from the chest down with a broken neck from a shallow water dive. I even have play by play photographs of me taking my last and famous dive.
After a major trauma of this magnitude, it can lead many folks down a dark and lonely path. While we all have times in our life that are more than trying than others I was and still am fortunate to be surrounded by the most loving family and a network of friends. This allows me to continue experimenting on myself in new and equally crazy ways.
Traveling and living around the world from the time I was born allowed me to experience a wide range of cultures, which afforded me the opportunity to get myself into all kinds of trouble. I very much live by the philosophy that every day could be your last, and you never know what will happen from one day to the next… I definitely push this philosophy to the limit as I am now rocking it out in a beautiful set of wheels.
I have been described as “Responsibly Irresponsible” over the years as I will engage in obscure adventures, scientific experiments on myself or allowing surgeons who do not speak English to slice into my spinal cord. However, I will always carefully plan out how irresponsible I am allowed to be by researching the hell out of whatever activity I’m about to engage.
The Birth of the Quirky Quad
The idea for the Quirky Quad Diaries came about in early 2016 when I was faced with an incredibly daunting situation of having a pressure sore over my tailbone about 3 cm deep with no real end in sight. I was confined to bed for almost a year and months before I decided to have major plastic surgery (this would be my seventh surgery and six years) on my beautiful behind in order to solve the problem once and for all.
I have always been the type of person to amuse myself, but I decided I needed a more comical distraction other than learning and researching all day. This led me to construct an online dating experiment as a young woman in a wheelchair. I decided to break the rules and I spent many months dating multiple men at the same time while keeping detailed records and posting my exploits on my Facebook page. Over the course of several months the Quirky Quad Diaries was born as many of my readers kept pushing me to create a blog, which is exactly what I am presently in the process of creating.
I intend to share all aspects of life as a quadriplegic with you as well as the crazy exploits of my life before I broke my neck considering I lived on the edge for 27 years before my accident. I tend to approach life with a dark sense of humor and make the most out of every situation whether that be intensely terrifying or insanely comical.
Sure there are more ideal situations than being stuck in a wheelchair, but I plan on doing it with a little bit of style, hopefully elegance and a ton of humor… That is my personal approach.
To give you a little taste of what is to come I have segmented my life into “Before Injury” and “After Injury” categories.
A sneak peek into the life of this crazy Quirky Quad:
BEFORE Spinal Cord Injury (BI)
- Taking trips deep into the Amazon rain forest with the family and swimming with piranhas
- Getting lost in the Belize jungle with my sister only to find a giant foam party nightclub in the middle of the rain forest
- Spending Christmas with the family camping on remote deserted islands in the Bahamas and spearfishing for dinner
- Meeting random men while in college at Loss Angeles and flying to the south of France on their private jet for the weekend
- Partying at the Playboy mansion at 18 with many bunnies and jumping on trampolines with live monkeys
- Hiking for months in the Australian outback with nothing but a map and compass
AFTER Spinal Cord Injury (AI)
- Braving multiple Intensive Care Units after several attempts to take my life by medical professionals due to unbelievably egregious errors in judgment
- Moving to China for life or death spinal surgery only to wake up in the ICU tied to my bed with purple string and intubated
- Frolicking deep in the mountains of southern China at the Little People Kingdom (yes, it’s a real thing!)
- Engaging in crazy sex-capades as a quadriplegic resulting in a trip to the ER with a fractured pelvis because I thought I was Gumby
- Creating a controlled online dating experiment with multiple subjects and keeping detailed records
- Falling deeply in love with a fantastic man who made the cut for my online dating experiment… I will explore what intimacy and a sex life for this Quirky Quad look like