Book Excerpt I

For people that don’t know, I’ve always had plans of writing a book about my post-spinal cord injury life’s experiences. For those that do know that it’s become a bit of an inside joke that I am because it has been taking me so long to do it.

The short shrift of my book writing history is that I started writing it the summer after my freshman year of college, but I didn’t get very far because I kept starting over. I picked it up again during the year I took off between college and law school and felt like I got a lot done. I decided that I made more effective use of my time by jumping from topic to topic instead of going from A to Z. That way if I got writer’s block on one topic I could keep momentum going on another. But of the 80 or so pages I wrote that summer I think most of the stuff that I wrote is useless. For example, I can’t imagine people will be too interested in reading the 20 pages that I wrote about getting dumped on prom night—stories that I felt set the stage for where my life was going leading up to my diving accident—but I think that most people will care most about my life post-SCI. That’s where the meat of the story is after all.

Once law school started I didn’t touch it for another five years until after I graduated, passed the bar, became an attorney, then struggled to find work. Someone who’s written a few books once gave me advice to never go back and edit old stuff because you’ll be hard-pressed to keep making forward progress. But I did go against that advice to edit and redo the chapter I wrote about the day of my accident and have it propel me forward from there. That worked for a while. But then I met someone and over the course of our ensuing year-long relationship whatever free time I wasn’t spending with her was spent job searching, a few side legal projects, and some part-time paid legal blog writing on top of my blog post writing for both this blog and the EasyStand Blog. In other words, I didn’t have or make the time for book writing.

But it’s been almost 17 years since my SCI and I’ve been making more of a concerted effort to get this writing done lately. I should have cranked it out by now, really. That said, one of my original visions for this blog was to post the occasional excerpt from my book to drum up interest, get feedback, and keep me motivated on working towards finishing it.

So here we go. This excerpt essentially follows on the heels of my July 12 post, which was only my second post on this blog back in 2009. Because that July 12 post was an edited 2,335 word excerpt of what (as of now) is a 15 page chapter you will see a little overlap between the end of that post and the start of the excerpt below. Also, please keep in mind that this excerpt is “blog post edited” and not “finished product edited.” Cheers, enjoy:

After the X-ray and MRI exams finished I think I was wheeled directly to my intensive care room. I tried my best to relax, but it was hard while also bracing myself for whatever was coming next. After an undetermined amount of time passed a middle-aged man with mostly grey hair walked in like a man on a mission. Without any introduction of any kind he went to the right side of my bed and poked my head near the temple with a sharp skin punch that damn near punctured me down to the skull bone. As he went to follow suit on the other side I don’t remember if I had an audible “Ow, what the hell was that for?!” reaction or if I reacted with shocked silence. Probably a combination of both. Either way, a heads up before he started poking holes in my head would have been nice.

After he was through he finally conceded that he was my new neurologist. He did that to me because he needed to put me in traction for the next few days to keep my neck stable. Traction was an apparatus that had a metal head harness with weights attached to it so that I would have zero movement in my neck and spine while the swelling went down. The screws for the head frame had to practically be screwed into my skull. It was akin to having somebody tighten a vice grip on your head and obviously it hurt like hell. My head throbbed with pain for hours until I just got used to it. Good times. I still have the scars to this day. Hair doesn’t grow on them so whenever I get my hair cut there is no hiding them. Thankfully, they’re only about the size of a pencil eraser but obvious enough that I still get questions about them. They used to really bother me but as the years have gone by I have paid less and less attention to them.

But that would prove to be a foreshadowed microcosm of that doctor’s poor bedside manner. The guy was an ice cold, all business, and arrogant doctor, which was about the last thing that a physically traumatized teenager needed at such a scary juncture. Somewhere around there I was also prescribed some form of steroids to reduce the swelling in my damaged spinal cord.

Prior to putting me into traction he had determined my diagnosis. I had sustained a spinal cord injury predominantly at the c-7 level. Because the impact of my diving accident didn’t sever my spinal cord my SCI was considered an incomplete injury, as compared to a complete injury where the spinal cord is completely severed. The result was that I was significantly paralyzed to a yet to be determined degree. Significant degree was right—I couldn’t move a thing below my shoulders.

Once I was put in traction all of the commotion was essentially over other than the typical, frequent nurse monitoring that goes along with patients in ICU. The only other item of business that was covered that night was scheduling a neck fusion surgery that would clean up the damage and stabilize my neck. That would go down on Monday morning.

I don’t remember anything else notable happening after that. It was too late at night for any of my extended family to make it a worthwhile trip to stop by so I didn’t receive any visitors. My family stuck around for a quite while into the night hours until it didn’t make any sense for them to stay any longer. Since things were still traumatic and touch and go one of my parents, my mom I believe, stayed on a cot in a room down the hall from the ICU and my dad went home with my sister. Eventually, somewhere around midnight I figure, after what felt like hours of stress and commotion that ran the full spectrum of emotions, I must have just passed out from exhaustion. And so the waiting game for major neck fusion surgery—the next marquis event in my life—began.

                ************************************************

I don’t remember how well I slept that night or for how long. But given the circumstances I assume not that well with nurses in my room checking vitals, urine output, and my IV machines about once an hour. Lying flat on my back with my skull bolted onto my bed frame stuck indefinitely in an ICU room is about as far outside my comfort zone of sleeping on my stomach in my own bed at home as it gets. Then again, I was exhausted from all the stress and drama so I’m sure I did sleep for some extended periods. Oddly enough, there is a certain safe and calming effect to the blended murmur of quietly beeping machines, ICU nurses at the nursing station, and other middle of the night quiet noise of the hospital. That said, I don’t remember when my family came in to say good morning.

As mentioned, my neck fusion surgery was scheduled for first thing Monday morning, so there was quite literally nothing to do but wait until the time of the procedure arrived. It was the longest two days (and change) of my life.

The ICU was buried somewhere in the corner of the first floor of the hospital behind a door that said “Authorized Personnel Only.” My room wasn’t too far in from that door because every time that anyone came in or went out I would hear it click and wind open. The room I was in didn’t have any windows or natural light. Moreover, the lights were left pretty low because a handful of my IV meds were sensitive to light so they purposely kept the whole room pretty dark. It felt like a tomb.

Because I was stuck flat on my back in traction my only view was the ceiling, save for whatever I could see with my peripheral vision. And with the side frames of the bed in the upright position at all times that peripheral viewpoint was minimal. I don’t think that there was a TV in my room, and even if there was it was pointless to have it on because I couldn’t see the screen anyway. Anybody who talked to me had to lean over the bed and look straight down at my face.

I couldn’t see the clock either, and that combined with the darkened room meant that I never had a true sense of what time a day it was unless I asked someone. There were no mealtimes to gauge the time of day either, both because eating on my back made me highly susceptible to choking and surgery usually requires a patient to have not eaten a meal for the better part of a day prior the procedure. Instead I got my nourishment via IV meds that were akin to super badass Gatorade. So most of my time consisted of staring at the ceiling or trying to sleep. It was a frustratingly awful solitary existence.

My only entertainment was when someone was in the room with me, but because it was an ICU nobody other than medical personnel could stay in my room for very long in case it disrupted the other patients. Regardless, I found myself salivating for constant, prolonged interaction with my parents whose presence was a major calming influence and reality check during the initial hours of adjustment to ICU life. I was trying to be tough and not needy so I tried to send the nurses for them as little as possible. But every time they entered my room it lifted my spirits immensely.

Along those same lines the most stand out thing about that Saturday was that my parents were able to let a few visitors come back to see me. But it could only be one or two at a time and they had to be family or very close friends. Obviously, family got a priority pass to come back but my parents had to be more of a gatekeeper when it came to my friends. Between the friends that returned from the night before in hopes of getting a chance to see me and word about my accident getting out the waiting room was overflowing with prospective visitors. I don’t recall them coming in to tell me that so and so friend was here and wanted to see me, so which friends were allowed to come back was essentially at my parent’s discretion. In essence, my parents cherry picked from which friends they knew the most or were most familiar with, not truly aware of which friends I considered the closest at the time. Unfortunately, that caused some hurt feelings. For example, my childhood best friend Brad—who I had grown apart from through middle and high school, but we reconnected when I was in college and are very close again—my mom brought back to see me immediately. I guess my mom saw him come in and was like, “Shawn would want to see you.” Meanwhile, a different friend Brad—who I was much closer friends with at the time—wasn’t brought back. Hopefully, all of those friends who didn’t make the cut understood, given the circumstances.

Of course, I was out of it for the better part of that day due to a combination of my body recovering from trauma, medication, and cabin fever so I can’t really remember which specific friends or family came back. But as the days, weeks, months, and years went by a variety of friends would ask if either I remember that they visited me or if my parents told me that they had tried to visit me. There were too many people so in most cases it was no on both accounts. Even if I didn’t have a big say over who visited me, or knew who was out in the waiting room, or couldn’t visit with people for very long, it was nice knowing that so many cared and reached out to me and my family. Very touching.

                ************************************************

While Saturday was a mostly forgettable cycle of sleep, staring at the ceiling, nurse duties, check ins by my parents, and brief chats with visitors, the Saturday night to Monday morning stretch was the worst. By the time Sunday rolled around I didn’t know if I had slept two minutes or two hours. I had no idea whether it was AM or PM. At one point I had myself thoroughly convinced that it was 6 AM Monday morning and I was finally in the homestretch to my surgery time. When I asked what time it was and was told it was only 6 PM Sunday night I completely lost my shit. In the blink of an eye time went backwards by 12 more hours. My patience had worn thin and I couldn’t take waiting anymore.

Being a total movie buff the best analogy that I can come up with for how my psyche devolved over those two days is the sequence from “Apocalypse Now” where Martin Sheen’s character Captain Willard is asked to stay in his hotel room and wait for his orders, which ultimately would take him into the heart of darkness to kill rogue Colonel Kurtz, played iconically by Marlon Brando. The wait for said orders takes a lot longer than expected to receive and as the days go by Willard starts going crazier and crazier cooped up in his room. He starts drinking, doing drugs, practicing karate moves, stripping his clothes off, tearing his room apart, etc. You set that to the music of “One” by Metallica, a song and music video that were based off of the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. The novel tells the tale of a soldier who loses his limbs, eyes, ears, and mouth after getting hit by an artillery shell, but his mind still works perfectly. Thus he ends up stuck in a hospital trapped in a lifeless body. Very apropos of my situation. Whether I would have stripped naked, cranked metal, and trashed my room if I was physically capable of it at the time history will never know.

Once Monday morning finally rolled around I was both relieved and excited, which is strange to say about going into any major surgery, but I just wanted out of my current state and onto the next phase. However, my surgery got pushed from early in the morning until noon, thereby making an unbearably long wait even longer. But as disappointed as I was it was just a few more hours in the big picture. I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The surgery itself was going to be fairly extensive, as you could imagine. I broke my neck with such force that I shattered vertebrae at three cervical levels, from c-5 to c-7. I basically left a mini-cluster fuck of bone shrapnel inside my spinal column. As a result, people would often refer to my c-7 SCI as a “burst c-7,” a label that I never liked for some reason. Anyway, the surgical plan was basically two-fold with an option for a third. First, the doctor would go in through the back of my neck and remove all of the broken pieces of bone relieving the contact points on my spinal cord.

Secondly, he would replace my shattered vertebrae with one from a cadaver. The prospect of a dead person’s bone being placed in my body was creepy, but the other most common alternative was carving a vertebra shaped bone out of my hip bone and using that instead. The upside of that was that my neck would get fused with a vertebra with my own DNA. But the downside is that it could cause too much undue trauma and increased risk of infection to another part of my body. So the cadaver bone it was. Then when the new vertebra was put in place he would fuse a plate to the two vertebrae above and below the new replacement to hold it into place. At the least I was going to get a plate fused to the back of my spinal column, which was about a three hour procedure. If once they got in there and discovered that the damage to my spinal cord/neck was so extensive and/or it would need more stability then he would fuse a plate onto the front of my spinal column as well. That would also be about a three hour procedure. So obviously the hope was that I would only need one plate. Spoiler alert: I needed plates fused to both the front and back of my spinal column, and therefore was in surgery for six hours. I shudder to think about what my parents and sister went through during those six hours, especially when after three hours they were told that it would be an additional three hours.

Preparation for the surgery was interesting. Of course, they did the regular prep like IV’s, putting the surgical gown on, stuck on vitals monitors, etc. But was interesting, because it was a neurological procedure, was that they also stuck a number of these diode type pads to my head that would monitor my brain activity during the procedure. And when I say stuck I mean they essentially glued them onto my head. After the procedure it would take days and an army of my family members and my then-girlfriend to use alcohol pads to slowly chip that glue out of my hair.

The next step was to meet my anesthesiologist in the pre-op room, who incidentally was my seventh and eighth grade Spanish teacher’s (one of my all-time favorite teachers, in fact) husband. He did his thing and gave me the skinny on how things were going to go in that regard. This was my third major surgery within that same calendar year—two lung collapses procedures in September and June, respectively—so I knew the drill by then.

Once it was FINALLY time to roll me into the operating room it suddenly got very real. Deep down I was confident that it was all routine and going to go according to plan, but any time you get put under for major surgery it also carries that heavy “what if?” feeling that you might not wake up again. One of the hospital Sisters was made available and she led me and family in a quick prayer, which was reassuring. The hardest part, of course, was saying the pre-surgery goodbye to my family. We exchanged I love you’s and they said that they would be right outside in the waiting room the whole time. I tried my hardest not to cry, mostly because I couldn’t wipe my own tears. I also wanted to exude as much braveness as possible so that they wouldn’t worry about me being too scared. When I had one of my lung collapse surgeries I was able to do a look back and see them waving at me as I got wheeled through the OR doors. But I couldn’t do that this time and it added a little extra drama and loneliness to the whole situation.

Once we got inside they positioned my gurney next to the OR table and transferred me over with the sheet underneath me. Then they strapped my arms down, got everything else into position, and started getting the anesthesia meds set up. Out of nervous curiosity I asked what they were doing at every step of the way. I’m sure they couldn’t wait to knock me out.

As far as that went, everyone who’s seen any medical TV drama or movie that involves surgery knows that when they start putting patients under they ask them to start counting backwards from 10 or 100. As I mentioned, this was my third major surgery within a year and just to mess with them/give them something to talk about later I just kept talking instead. My whole premise, which I told them, was that I thought it would be kind of funny that they would know the last thing that I said before I was put out, but I wouldn’t. Even though I was scared out of my mind going into the biggest surgery of my entire life I still managed to rise above the fear and interject a little levity into the situation. That’s just who I am. So what I basically said was, “Instead of counting I think it would be funny if I just kept chattering like a monkey and only you guys would know what my last wor….” And I was out for the next six plus hours.

Wishing a Full Recovery for Eric LeGrand

In my very last post about the wheelchair user who scored a touchdown I described it as a cool convergence of sports and disability. But unfortunately every yin has its yang, and thus it was with great disappointment that I learned about Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand, who was paralyzed below the neck after making a tackle against Army this past weekend.  He has since undergone emergency spinal surgery and apparently is in good spirits.

Now in my world the phrase “paralyzed below the neck” is typically synonymous with quadriplegia, so I can only assume that is the kind of recovery that he has in store for him. As daunting and unfortunate as that is there has been some pretty good recent precedent of football players sustaining significant spinal cord injuries and having successful recoveries from them.

In 2000 former Penn State cornerback Adam Taliaferro sustained a SCI at the C-5 level. He was given a 3% chance of walking again but after eight months of rehab he was on his feet again (but never played again). I still remember watching him lead the team onto the field the following football season. It was pretty emotional. Rutgers coach Greg Schiano apparently spoke with mentor and former sideline boss Joe Paterno, who was Taliaferro’s coach at the time of his injury, to pick his brain about how to properly support LeGrand and move forward with the team.

In 2007 Kevin Everett, a reserve tight end for the Buffalo Bills, sustained a SCI while attempting a special teams tackle against the Denver Broncos. He suffered a compression of his C-3 and C-4 vertebrae and initially had no movement in his extremities, which made him a very high level quadriplegic. But immediately after his injury a Bills team physician, Dr. Andrew Cappuccino, decided to do a medical procedure known as cold therapy or hypothermia therapy that reduces the body’s overall temperature via an intravenous cold saline solution and thereby protected Everett’s spinal cord from further swelling and damage. The therapy was developed with a great deal of help from Dr. Barth Green, the president of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Dr. Cappuccino called Dr. Barth after he started the cold therapy. Anyway, it was a risky decision but ultimately was a good move because despite his initial chances of walking being bleak or dismal Everett also went on to be able to walk again.

So LeGrand is currently in a tough spot to be sure. I still vividly recall being in his shoes fourteen years ago: the fear, confusion, frustration, uncertainty, etc. But working in his favor are the facts that he is a conditioned athlete and that he had his injury in a time where there are a litany of medical advancements in the world of SCI. I extend my support and sympathies to both he and his family and hope that he has a full recovery. With some luck he might even end up like Taliaferro and Everett.

 

RIP Christopher Reeve: My Personal Encounter with the Man Himself (From the Archives)

Yesterday marked the six year anniversary of Christopher Reeve’s passing. To pay tribute I thought that I would repost what I wrote last year about his impact, the day that I met him, etc., and to continue that practice in future years. The only thing that I will add here at the forefront is that within sixteen hours or so of making that post live I got an email from Christopher Reeve’s daughter, which was obviously a great surprise. I won’t get into the details in order to preserve what was a private, special exchange, but in short she thanked me for writing the post, for keeping her dad’s memory alive, that my intuition about him was correct that day, and for respectfully giving him the moment of privacy that you’ll read about further below. The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and fellow Reeve supporters were my target audience with that post, so it was quite shocking to be contacted directly by a member of the Reeve family, let alone so soon after posting it. But I’m glad that it had such a positive impact, and I still consider that the highlight of my writing “career.” You can read the Reeve Foundation post commemorating the sixth anniversary of his passing here or see how people are sharing their thoughts on the subject here. Check out my archived post below:

Today marks the five year anniversary of Christopher Reeve's passing, and I couldn’t let it pass by me without sharing a few words about that. In short, his death was a highly unfortunate event at the time, and its saddening impact remains so to this day. I still remember that day quite vividly in fact. When I first caught word that he had died everything in my life stopped briefly. I was a month and a half into my second year of law school, and needless to say my studies took a dive for the rest of the day. In its stead I hit the web and read everything about his passing that I could. That followed with a period of extended quiet reflection. I found the way he died (suffering a cardiac arrest that was preceded by a skin pressure wound that caused a systemic infection) very sobering because it’s something that’s an issue for all people with SCI. Thankfully pressure sores and skin breakdowns have never been a problem with me – presumably a result of my being careful with all the body parts I can’t feel and my surprisingly tough skin – but what put things into perspective was the realization about how things could go south pretty drastically if it were to ever occur.

Once the initial shock wore off my thoughts on the matter went into two different directions. First, and I briefly echoed this in my Derrick Thomas post, I was deeply saddened to lose an “SCI brother.” Living with paralysis stemming from a spinal cord injury has become a pretty common disability type these days but that group as a whole is still quite a minority as compared to everyday, able-bodied society as a whole. So to that regard I’ve always felt like I’ve shared membership in a club of sorts to others who live with SCI. Thus I always felt a fairly strong connection to Christopher Reeve. And not just that, but he was the president and CEO of our unique club.

That said, secondly, and maybe selfishly, my thoughts then immediately went to fear for the future of SCI research and fundraising. People in my position, who have lived this lifestyle for years and years, are not just going to wake up on some given morning to discover that all of our physical faculties have returned on their own. We rely quite exclusively on the discovery of the elusive cure for paralysis to get most, and possibly all of it back. With Reeve’s passing, the discovery of said cure and other related things that improve the lives of people living with SCI suddenly felt iffy because our greatest champion for the cause had fallen. Reeve was almost hands down the face of our disability, thanks in large part to his popular global icon status as SUPERMAN. Without his unfortunate accident, and the publicity that ensued, SCI issues would not have been thrust into the public sphere to the immediate and vast nature that they did. Moreover, his journey in the aftermath, his positive attitude, and his decree that it was not a matter of if, but when he realized his dream of walking again brought a ton of awareness and activism about SCI in a short period of time that I’m guessing would not equal where we would be fourteen years later today without him.

Thus right away I was highly concerned that all of the great progress that was being made in that area while he was still alive would slow down significantly after his death, or worse: stall out completely. But the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation has continued to do great things in his wake, and with Marc Buoniconti being on the cover of Sports Illustrated a few months ago representing The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and all of their great work, I think that the fight for a cure for paralysis has been able to maintain itself as an important public issue that requires much more progress to fulfill its ultimate goal.

My own personal account of Christopher Reeve dates back to the fall of 1996 when I met him briefly in Denver, CO. Somewhere around early November Reeve was in Denver for a major public speaking engagement at the downtown convention center. At the time I was still out in Denver for an eight week extensive inpatient spinal cord injury rehab stint at Craig Hospital, arguably the finest facility in the country (if not the world) for such a thing. While he was in town he stayed in a room about six doors down from mine in the East Building at Craig, which is essentially the residence wing. All the rooms in that part of the facility were set up like single living accessible apartments with a private bathroom, a mini fridge, an office-type area, and a living room area with a pullout couch bed for family members to sleep on. Most of the Craig patients that roomed in the residence side of the facility were in their final transition period before getting discharged from rehab, which for me meant that at the time I was in my last two to three weeks before going back home.

It was no surprise that Reeve stayed at Craig while he was in town. First of all, the room where he stayed was easily the most accessible lodging in the city, not to mention completely private from the public. Second, the word on the street leading up to his visit was that immediately after his injury Reeve wanted to come out to Denver to do his SCI rehab at Craig, because of the great national reputation it has, but they didn’t have any patient openings to accommodate him at the time. I’m not sure if that’s actually true but if it is then in a roundabout way he finally got his chance to stay there and see the facility first-hand.

The morning after he arrived he held a city-wide press conference in the media room at Craig (fun fact: I used to watch my Packer games on their 72 inch big screen TV). I don’t remember if I missed the presser because I wasn’t up yet or because I was in the middle of my morning therapy sessions, but my dad went down and took some pictures (I’ll have to scan and post later). Sometime afterwards my dad came back to my room and mentioned that a bunch of other patients had congregated a few doors down from Reeve’s if I wanted to go try and meet the man himself. I’ve never been one to resort to rubbernecking but considering I would probably never have such an opportunity ever again I ventured down the hall to join the other half dozen or so nonetheless.

After a brief moment Reeve appeared from his room and came down to us. He used a sip and puff mechanism to drive his wheelchair and as soon as he stopped and moved his mouth away from the sip/puff thing he said “Hey, everybody” in a quiet, friendly voice. The group responded with a collective ‘hey’ back. Then he asked what we were doing there at Craig, kind of focusing his attention on one lady in particular to start things off. She was a paraplegic who was discharged less than two weeks after I arrived at Craig. If my memory serves it was her second time at Craig due to a re-injury. I remember also that she was very loud, brash, and kind of speedy aggressive with her wheelchair, but not necessarily in a negative way. She belonged to a click of sorts with a handful of other patients who had been in rehab together for quite the same amount of time. Whenever I saw them hanging out in the halls I felt like a high school freshman steering clear of the cool upper classmen group all over again. It should be noted that in true circle of life fashion (my nephew’s really been into the LION KING lately so I had to throw in that reference) about four weeks after she was gone I found myself involved with a similar click of my own. And in my rehab discharge roundtable with my parents and rehab team my physical therapist (an ex-Navy SEAL of 26 years) mentioned that a handful of his other rehab patients had started requesting a fast manual wheelchair like mine, assuming that the chair was the reason for the speed I was exhibiting, not me making it go fast.

Anyway, when he essentially asked her what she was there for she very quickly replied, “To see you.” Then he said, “Well are you here for therapy as well?” And then she said back, “Nope, I just came to see you.” I don’t recall the details of any other specific conversation exchanges he had with the group but I do remember that he didn’t stay and chat with us for long. I remember thinking at the time, and still feel the same to this day, that it was unfortunate that of any person in the group that he opened up his brief friendly dialogue with it was with the one person who was no longer affiliated with the facility and had only visited that day just to get a close up look at him.

My immediate impression of the whole exchange at the time, and an opinion I still strongly share to this day, is that I think he just wanted to shoot the breeze with us about our therapies and our thoughts on getting a chance to do rehab at such a fine facility. Kind of a “we’ve all gone through this” note comparison session. That theory carries extra weight if it’s in fact true that his admission request was turned away. So as far as that goes, I always felt like he just wanted to pick our brains about getting to do something that he never got the chance to do. That’s why I think it’s too bad that most of his native chit chat time was taken up with someone who couldn’t read between the lines. I feel like at least she could have told him that she was a former patient and not just a crazy fan. Had he engaged me instead I would have said that I was a c-7 quad, had a diving accident, was from Wisconsin, came there for more aggressive therapy, it was hard as hell to be away from my family and friends but it was a necessary move that I didn’t regret, talked up the quality of the joint, and asked where he rehabbed and what his thoughts were about it. I guess I should have raised my hand or something.

That afternoon I got the chance to go to the convention center and see him speak. In fact, most of the hospital staff and patients got the afternoon off from therapy to do so as well. For me it was a very liberating round-trip because unlike most everyone else who got bused downtown, I got a separate day pass to go by myself with my parents. One of the smart things my parents did was have our Chevy Blazer driven out to Denver so they had a vehicle to get around. It was only a small handful of times that I got to leave completely untethered from the facility. So it was kind of a big deal at the time to be able to drive down there by ourselves.

Because we were on our own schedule, we got to head downtown after most everyone else had already left. As fate had it, on our way to the elevator we crossed paths with Reeve and his crew of people, who were also getting ready to load up on the elevator. They were right by the elevator doors so we waited politely behind this decorative wall divider thing so that they could get on the elevator first. But someone in his entourage saw us and and waived us past because they weren’t quite ready. As I was just about to break into view of him I heard him say “A little more to the right” which based on my own experience I assumed meant that their holdup was because he needed a body adjustment in his chair. Thus even though I passed by him within less than six feet between us I didn’t look over in his direction to respect his privacy. In retrospect I probably should have glanced over and given him a quick hello or a friendly nod, but at the time I felt pretty strongly about keeping the blinders on because I knew how frustrating it was to have people stare at you while you were getting some private adjustment.

So my one close encounter with Christopher Reeve didn’t quite have the bang for the buck, and was more like a fly by, but at the time it was a really great moment for me and my parents. And I always like getting the chance to share the story. But overall, the thing that I will always take away from that day and that chance meeting is that when you strip it all away – the Superman thing, the social popularity, the global icon status, the face of our disability – he was just one of us: a guy who sustained an unfortunate, life altering spinal cord injury, became a quadriplegic, and was just trying to continue on with his life as best as he could. And yes maybe that included waiving a few people onto the elevator ahead of him because he needed help getting a few small adjustments to make him feel more comfortable and presentable.

Keeping with the spirit of this anniversary, here’s a couple of related links I wanted to share. The first is an article written by the CEO of the Christopher & Dane Reeve Foundation about how the best way to honor his legacy is to find a cure for paralysis. Clearly, I concur with that notion. The second is the Reeve Foundation forum page where people have been posting their thoughts about the five year anniversary of Reeve’s passing and sharing stories about how he touched their lives.

So in closing I say rest in peace, good sir. It was great getting the brief chance to meet you once upon a time in Denver.

Must See SCI TV: Breakthrough with Tony Robbins

One evening a few weeks ago I was working at the computer while peeling through my DVR and I got an out of the blue text from my good friend Kurt, who also doubles as one of my two co-founding partners of the Minnesota Spinal Cord Injury Association nonprofit we’re starting, that read, “Are you watching the Tony Robbins special on NBC?” I’ve never been a fan of those “inspirational speaker/life coach” types who charge people oodles of money for their books, seminars, etc. so I very facetiously replied, “Not a fan, is he going to work a miracle or something?” A quick reply came back simply saying, “Turn now to NBC.”

So I obliged him and immediately flipped the channel to NBC to find fifteen minutes left of a “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins” episode that featured a quadriplegic named Frank and his wife Kristin. Frank broke his neck and sustained a spinal cord injury diving into a hotel pool on his wedding night, and the couple had been struggling both independently and collectively with their new, unexpected lifestyle ever since. I’m not going to do a blow by blow account of the episode in this space since you can just watch the episode yourself, but the premise is that Robbins puts them up to a handful of challenges, again both individually and collectively, that changes their outlook on how they can live their lives in light of everything that Frank’s new disability brings to the table (e.g. skydiving, spending time apart for the first time since his accident, playing “murderball” (aka quad rugby) in front of his family, and working on and driving a desert truck since racing one was his dream). Then there’s one other big surprise at the end.

Of course, some of the thoughts that Frank (and Kristen) shared hit home for me since I parallel them in a lot of ways: second guessing his choice to dive into the pool, grieving the life you should have had, having a loved one have no choice but to help him with his personal cares, not having the ability to sense his wife’s loving embrace, feeling like he’s holding his loved ones back, self doubt about the ability to start a family, the frustrating strive to be self supportive, hesitations about getting outside of his comfort zone, etc. And then yet despite all the hard struggles and emotions of living with paralysis, gaining that strong sense of pride and accomplishment for the things you can do as well.

If you live with SCI or know someone with SCI it is a pretty powerful piece. Heck, I recommend it to anyone interested in checking out an inspiring personal journey about overcoming personal demons and adversity, and ultimately achieving potential you didn’t know that you had inside of you. And dare I say it: a new found respect for Tony Robbins, if you are like me up to this point.

However, the caveat is that the clock is ticking because it is only available to be viewed online until September 4th. Here is the Hulu episode link, or click the link above to go to the NBC show site. I would have brought this to people’s attention sooner but I actually just got around to watching the balance of the episode that I missed tonight. So tune in before it’s too late. Enjoy.

Congrats to Craig Hospital

I wanted to take the opportunity to throw out a quick congratulations to Craig Hospital who recently was picked as one of the best hospitals in the country by U.S. News, coming in at #7 in the rehabilitation category. As I’ve mentioned here and there in past posts, I did an eight week rehab stint out at Craig in Denver, Colorado from around September 25 to November 24 (I flew home the day before Thanksgiving) 1996.

Immediately after my six hour neck fusion surgery (three hours on both the front and back sides of my neck sandwiching a few vertebrae from a cadaver between two plates), my neurosurgeon told my parents that they were going to want to send me to Denver, Chicago, or Minneapolis right away. In other words, to facilities that had much more expertise with spinal cord injury rehab than the Eau Claire hospital I was at (Sacred Heart).

When my parents brought up that notion they essentially got a real quick “Hell no!” back from me. It was inside a week since my diving accident so it was obviously still a tense emotional time. But even if in retrospect I might have been better off in terms of more quickly advancing my recovery and achieving my post-SCI rehab potential, the last thing I wanted was to be away from my family for a few months. To a lesser extent the same line of reasoning went for my then girlfriend as well. Having them all nearby in the early stages was invaluable to my initial recovery and emotional health.

But once late August/early September rolled around it was becoming increasingly apparent that I was reaching my hospital rehab program’s SCI specific limits and made the difficult, life changing decision to transfer to Chicago or Denver. So in the subsequent weeks my parents went on scouting missions on my behalf. The Rehab Institute of Chicago (which to my slight surprise was #1 on the aforementioned list) came highly recommended and my parents went there first. On the plus side it was within driving distance, but on the downside it was apparently in an “interesting” part of downtown Chicago that made my parents nervous. For example, a security guard escorted my parents from the facility to the nearby parking lot, which from what they were told was common protocol just to be on the safe side from sketchy neighborhood behavior (i.e. muggers). So my parents were left with an uneasy feeling about me being there.

A weekend trip to Denver came next. The tour of Craig Hospital went quite swimmingly. My parents liked the facility, location, and would have access to an apartment building right on the property which was designed for visiting families to stay near their loved ones/patients. So we had a winner. They even took a day trip to Golden, CO to tour the Coors Light brewery and to Boulder to score me a University of Colorado Buffaloes t-shirt, which you could find me wearing in physical therapy every week thereafter.

A bunch of details had to be hammered out first, but we flew out on September 25th with my favorite rehab nurse Kim in tow in case something medical happened to me midflight (e.g. my catheter balloon burst inside my bladder due to the increased air pressure). Within an hour after arriving at Craig I had met my physical therapist Mitch, who was a burly ex-Navy SEAL of twenty-six years, so it was pretty badass. He gave me a quick look up and down and just said, “Eight weeks, huh?” because a typical Craig SCI patient was there for a minimum of twelve weeks. Then he said, “Ok. Let’s get you a chair, I’ll be right back” And just like that I was in a sporty Quickie manual wheelchair, as compared to the much less functional E&J chair I was using at Sacred Heart. So that immediately set the stage for the next era of my SCI rehab, and away we went thereafter.

I can go on about my time at Craig for pages and pages, so at this point I’ll just refer people to the relevant portions of my book whenever it comes out (I’m getting back to work on it soon). But I will say in short that although it was very difficult being so far away from my family and friends for two months, deciding to go to Craig was the best thing I could have ever done at that stage of my life. It is undeniable that my overall rehab program got boosted to new levels as soon as I landed in Denver. Simply put, I owe much of the independence and physical well-being that I’ve gained over the years to that facility.

Plus as it turned out my family was as close as they could be anyway. My dad stayed for the first two weeks to act as a transitional buffer (his job allowed for it, my mom’s teaching job didn’t); and before I even transferred out to Denver my parents found a great airfare deal of $96 round trip from Minneapolis to Denver, mapped out who would fly out on which weekends, and bought between thirteen and eighteen round trip tickets for them, my sister, and my girlfriend. So out of that eight week rehab stint out in Denver there were only two weekends that my family didn’t visit. And by then I was adjusted enough with the whole situation that I felt comfortable being on my own around the facility for the weekend. By that point I was participating in a lot of local weekend field trips anyway.

Although I have no regrets about going to Craig, I do look at the RIC being #1 on this list and wonder how things might have been different had I gone there. Not to mention that it would would have been closer for my family to visit. Then again, if things went smoothly, by the time they drove from Eau Claire to Minneapolis, flew into Denver, and then got to Craig it practically covered the same six hour road trip from Eau Claire to Chicago. The interesting thing along that line of thinking though are the facilities here in Minneapolis, which is obviously much closer to Eau Claire than the rest. I lived transitionally at the Courage Center for three months before I got an accessible apartment and I still work out at their Fitness Center every Friday. So that could have worked out too I suppose.

But I could care less what the rankings technically are, because as far as I’m concerned Craig Hospital is in a class of its own. Great location, great world renowned rehab facility, great rehab staff, always on the cutting edge of SCI science and research, etc. Craig provided me with a great overall rehab experience. And along the way Craig also provided me with a handful of life long connections, including fellow graduates I’ve stayed in touch with, becoming a super fan of the Colorado Avalanche NHL hockey team, and Denver has since become an adopted city to boot. I just wish that I lived much closer so that I could visit more often. Like I said, I’ve got a lot more that I can say about all of that above, but you’ll just have to stay tuned.

My sincerest congrats to Craig Hospital, your high ranking is well deserved.

SCI Summer Safety Checklist

A Reeve Foundation's Paralysis Study concluded that 200,000 Americans are living with paralysis resulting from sporting and recreational activity accidents. Of those 200,000, each year about 6,500 teens end up in the emergency room because of a diving accident. That’s what happened to me fourteen years ago on July 12, 1996. A diving accident at a beach resulted in a spinal cord injury and life as a C6-7 quadriplegic. That is why it is worth passing along the Reeve Foundation Summer Safety Checklist. Along with The Reeve Foundation, I encourage people to review this checklist with their families, especially the teens. Living with a spinal cord injury isn’t fun and can often be a very difficult lifestyle. A significant summer recreational accident that results in SCI can easily be avoided with a little helpful information.

Driving
- Buckle up… properly! Bottom strap across hips and shoulder strap across chest.
- Do not be distracted by other passengers, motorists, cell phones, radio, etc. Stay focused!
- Obey car and booster seat guidelines. Swimming and diving
- Do not dive in less than nine feet of water. - No board, no diving!


Personal watercrafts
- Be watchful, defensive, obey speeds, and keep your distance. Body boarding
- Hold board so it extends past head.


General Water Safety
- No re-dos; do not combine alcohol and water-related activities!
- Be aware of sandbars.
- Feet-first entry. Bicycle Riding
- Wear a helmet… properly! A helmet should be worn snug, fitted, and level.
- Replace helmet after three to five years and/or if cracked.

July 12: 14 Years and Counting…

I usually don’t post on back to back days, but by the same token it’s worth doing so anyway to recognize that today is the 14th anniversary of the diving accident that left me paralyzed from the chest down after sustaining a spinal cord injury. Even though its full impact lessens a little bit as each year passes it will always remain a very significant date in my world. Even waking up this morning immediately had a different “feeling” to it.

Anyway, I covered my thoughts about this day pretty extensively on this blog last year and don’t really have anything to add to it this year other than to make what I feel is the requisite mention of it. So at this point I’ll just dip into the archives and repost links to my two July 12th posts: “Memoirs of a Life Changing Day” which was my never before shared first hand breakdown of the day of my accident, and “13 and Counting…” which delved into my reflections on past July 12’s and how I’ve dealt with each passing anniversary.

What I can add though is that for the past two an a half years I have been working on starting a Minnesota Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association along with two good friends that are heavily involved in the disability community in the greater Minneapolis region. Tomorrow night we are participating in a muscle spasticity treatment event sponsored by Medtronic, Inc. which for all intents and purposes will be the unofficial coming out party for our chapter. We plan on doing all of the filings necessary to make our chapter official later this week. It’s very exciting. And I say that is how the circle of life works.

RIP Christopher Reeve: My Personal Encounter with the Man Himself

Today marks the five year anniversary of Christopher Reeve's passing, and I couldn’t let it pass by me without sharing a few words about that. In short, his death was a highly unfortunate event at the time, and its saddening impact remains so to this day. I still remember that day quite vividly in fact. When I first caught word that he had died everything in my life stopped briefly. I was a month and a half into my second year of law school, and needless to say my studies took a dive for the rest of the day. In its stead I hit the web and read everything about his passing that I could. That followed with a period of extended quiet reflection. I found the way he died (suffering a cardiac arrest that was preceded by a skin pressure wound that caused a systemic infection) very sobering because it’s something that’s an issue for all people with SCI. Thankfully pressure sores and skin breakdowns have never been a problem with me – presumably a result of my being careful with all the body parts I can’t feel and my surprisingly tough skin – but what put things into perspective was the realization about how things could go south pretty drastically if it were to ever occur.

Once the initial shock wore off my thoughts on the matter went into two different directions. First, and I briefly echoed this in my Derrick Thomas post, I was deeply saddened to lose an “SCI brother.” Living with paralysis stemming from a spinal cord injury has become a pretty common disability type these days but that group as a whole is still quite a minority as compared to everyday, able-bodied society as a whole. So to that regard I’ve always felt like I’ve shared membership in a club of sorts to others who live with SCI. Thus I always felt a fairly strong connection to Christopher Reeve. And not just that, but he was the president and CEO of our unique club.

That said, secondly, and maybe selfishly, my thoughts then immediately went to fear for the future of SCI research and fundraising. People in my position, who have lived this lifestyle for years and years, are not just going to wake up on some given morning to discover that all of our physical faculties have returned on their own. We rely quite exclusively on the discovery of the elusive cure for paralysis to get most, and possibly all of it back. With Reeve’s passing, the discovery of said cure and other related things that improve the lives of people living with SCI suddenly felt iffy because our greatest champion for the cause had fallen. Reeve was almost hands down the face of our disability, thanks in large part to his popular global icon status as SUPERMAN. Without his unfortunate accident, and the publicity that ensued, SCI issues would not have been thrust into the public sphere to the immediate and vast nature that they did. Moreover, his journey in the aftermath, his positive attitude, and his decree that it was not a matter of if, but when he realized his dream of walking again brought a ton of awareness and activism about SCI in a short period of time that I’m guessing would not equal where we would be fourteen years later today without him.

Thus right away I was highly concerned that all of the great progress that was being made in that area while he was still alive would slow down significantly after his death, or worse: stall out completely. But the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation has continued to do great things in his wake, and with Marc Buoniconti being on the cover of Sports Illustrated a few months ago representing The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and all of their great work, I think that the fight for a cure for paralysis has been able to maintain itself as an important public issue that requires much more progress to fulfill its ultimate goal.

My own personal account of Christopher Reeve dates back to the fall of 1996 when I met him briefly in Denver, CO. Somewhere around early November Reeve was in Denver for a major public speaking engagement at the downtown convention center. At the time I was still out in Denver for an eight week extensive inpatient spinal cord injury rehab stint at Craig Hospital, arguably the finest facility in the country (if not the world) for such a thing. While he was in town he stayed in a room about six doors down from mine in the East Building at Craig, which is essentially the residence wing. All the rooms in that part of the facility were set up like single living accessible apartments with a private bathroom, a mini fridge, an office-type area, and a living room area with a pullout couch bed for family members to sleep on. Most of the Craig patients that roomed in the residence side of the facility were in their final transition period before getting discharged from rehab, which for me meant that at the time I was in my last two to three weeks before going back home.

It was no surprise that Reeve stayed at Craig while he was in town. First of all, the room where he stayed was easily the most accessible lodging in the city, not to mention completely private from the public. Second, the word on the street leading up to his visit was that immediately after his injury Reeve wanted to come out to Denver to do his SCI rehab at Craig, because of the great national reputation it has, but they didn’t have any patient openings to accommodate him at the time. I’m not sure if that’s actually true but if it is then in a roundabout way he finally got his chance to stay there and see the facility first-hand.

The morning after he arrived he held a city-wide press conference in the media room at Craig (fun fact: I used to watch my Packer games on their 72 inch big screen TV). I don’t remember if I missed the presser because I wasn’t up yet or because I was in the middle of my morning therapy sessions, but my dad went down and took some pictures (I’ll have to scan and post later). Sometime afterwards my dad came back to my room and mentioned that a bunch of other patients had congregated a few doors down from Reeve’s if I wanted to go try and meet the man himself. I’ve never been one to resort to rubbernecking but considering I would probably never have such an opportunity ever again I ventured down the hall to join the other half dozen or so nonetheless.

After a brief moment Reeve appeared from his room and came down to us. He used a sip and puff mechanism to drive his wheelchair and as soon as he stopped and moved his mouth away from the sip/puff thing he said “Hey, everybody” in a quiet, friendly voice. The group responded with a collective ‘hey’ back. Then he asked what we were doing there at Craig, kind of focusing his attention on one lady in particular to start things off. She was a paraplegic who was discharged less than two weeks after I arrived at Craig. If my memory serves it was her second time at Craig due to a re-injury. I remember also that she was very loud, brash, and kind of speedy aggressive with her wheelchair, but not necessarily in a negative way. She belonged to a click of sorts with a handful of other patients who had been in rehab together for quite the same amount of time. Whenever I saw them hanging out in the halls I felt like a high school freshman steering clear of the cool upper classmen group all over again. It should be noted that in true circle of life fashion (my nephew’s really been into the LION KING lately so I had to throw in that reference) about four weeks after she was gone I found myself involved with a similar click of my own. And in my rehab discharge roundtable with my parents and rehab team my physical therapist (an ex-Navy SEAL of 26 years) mentioned that a handful of his other rehab patients had started requesting a fast manual wheelchair like mine, assuming that the chair was the reason for the speed I was exhibiting, not me making it go fast.

Anyway, when he essentially asked her what she was there for she very quickly replied, “To see you.” Then he said, “Well are you here for therapy as well?” And then she said back, “Nope, I just came to see you.” I don’t recall the details of any other specific conversation exchanges he had with the group but I do remember that he didn’t stay and chat with us for long. I remember thinking at the time, and still feel the same to this day, that it was unfortunate that of any person in the group that he opened up his brief friendly dialogue with it was with the one person who was no longer affiliated with the facility and had only visited that day just to get a close up look at him.

My immediate impression of the whole exchange at the time, and an opinion I still strongly share to this day, is that I think he just wanted to shoot the breeze with us about our therapies and our thoughts on getting a chance to do rehab at such a fine facility. Kind of a “we’ve all gone through this” note comparison session. That theory carries extra weight if it’s in fact true that his admission request was turned away. So as far as that goes, I always felt like he just wanted to pick our brains about getting to do something that he never got the chance to do. That’s why I think it’s too bad that most of his native chit chat time was taken up with someone who couldn’t read between the lines. I feel like at least she could have told him that she was a former patient and not just a crazy fan. Had he engaged me instead I would have said that I was a c-7 quad, had a diving accident, was from Wisconsin, came there for more aggressive therapy, it was hard as hell to be away from my family and friends but it was a necessary move that I didn’t regret, talked up the quality of the joint, and asked where he rehabbed and what his thoughts were about it. I guess I should have raised my hand or something.

That afternoon I got the chance to go to the convention center and see him speak. In fact, most of the hospital staff and patients got the afternoon off from therapy to do so as well. For me it was a very liberating roundtrip because unlike most everyone else who got bused downtown, I got a separate day pass to go by myself with my parents. One of the smart things my parents did was have our Chevy Blazer driven out to Denver so they had a vehicle to get around. It was only a small handful of times that I got to leave completely untethered from the facility. So it was kind of a big deal at the time to be able to drive down there by ourselves.

Because we were on our own schedule, we got to head downtown after most everyone else had already left. As fate had it, on our way to the elevator we crossed paths with Reeve and his crew of people, who were also getting ready to load up on the elevator. They were right by the elevator doors so we waited politely behind this decorative wall divider thing so that they could get on the elevator first. But someone in his entourage saw us and and waived us past because they weren’t quite ready. As I was just about to break into view of him I heard him say “A little more to the right” which based on my own experience I assumed meant that their holdup was because he needed a body adjustment in his chair. Thus even though I passed by him within less than six feet between us I didn’t look over in his direction to respect his privacy. In retrospect I probably should have glanced over and given him a quick hello or a friendly nod, but at the time I felt pretty strongly about keeping the blinders on because I knew how frustrating it was to have people stare at you while you were getting some private adjustment.

So my one close encounter with Christopher Reeve didn’t quite have the bang for the buck, and was more like a fly by, but at the time it was a really great moment for me and my parents. And I always like getting the chance to share the story. But overall, the thing that I will always take away from that day and that chance meeting is that when you strip it all away – the Superman thing, the social popularity, the global icon status, the face of our disability – he was just one of us: a guy who sustained an unfortunate, life altering spinal cord injury, became a quadriplegic, and was just trying to continue on with his life as best as he could. And yes maybe that included waiving a few people onto the elevator ahead of him because he needed help getting a few small adjustments to make him feel more comfortable and presentable.

Keeping with the spirit of this anniversary, here’s a couple of related links I wanted to share. The first is an article written by the CEO of the Christopher & Dane Reeve Foundation about how the best way to honor his legacy is to find a cure for paralysis. Clearly, I concur with that notion. The second is the Reeve Foundation forum page where people have been posting their thoughts about the five year anniversary of Reeve’s passing and sharing stories about how he touched their lives.

So in closing I say rest in peace, good sir. It was great getting the brief chance to meet you once upon a time in Denver.

July 12 (Part I: Memoirs of a Life Changing Day)

This past Sunday, July 12 was a weird day for me. In fact, it is perpetually and perennially a weird day for me. To the vast majority of folks out there the 12th of July is just a meaningless date stuck in the middle of the month. If anything, it marks the halfway point of the summer. To a good friend of mine, July 12th signifies his wedding anniversary. To some lingering disco and/or savvy sports history fans out there, July 12th is the anniversary of “Disco Demolition” at Comisky Park in Chicago—this year being the 30th year hence. But to me, July 12th is a date that will always live in infamy, because it was on July 12th, 1996 that I had the paralyzing diving accident that forever changed my life.

The day itself started off like almost every preceding 1996 Eau Claire, WI summer day: I woke up to warm, partly cloudy, mid 70’s weather. My only thoughts were on mowing a few clients’ lawns, as me and two great buddies had a summer lawn mowing business. We only planned to put in about a half day’s worth of work because we had been planning a “company” beach BBQ at a local lake with our friends on that particular Friday for weeks. Regardless, I left my bedroom on my way to “work” that morning without a scintilla of a thought that my life would be catastrophically and forever changed before I went to bed that night. Instead, it would be the last time I would ever roll over and sit up in bed, stand up, feel the full sensation of a full body stretch, go to the bathroom unimpeded, shower unassisted, dress myself, let alone walk, etc. Moreover, I would never see that bedroom again.

Flash forward to around 5 pm that evening at the beach, when our typical 17 year old BBQ was in full swing: copious consumption of Mountain Dew, burgers and dogs, the throwing back and forth of friendly smart talk, and the sharing of good times overall. In a pretty short timeframe I myself probably chased 3 triple cheeseburgers (with 4 slices of cheese each) with damn near a six pack of Dew. (FYI, I do NOT have that appetite anymore…but kinda wish I did.)

Somewhere around 7 I had to change from my casual beach garb into some more dress casual clothes, leave the party, and meet my parents at our country club for dinner. I had made it clear that I would be eating—a lot—before our family dinner and thus meeting them for dinner would be a wash, but my mom was insistent. Leading up to that Friday I had been grounded by my dad for staying out past curfew, so it was agreed that if I took the time to leave my party and join them that my dad might hand me my get out of jail free card. So in the end I gladly followed through. As soon as everyone else’s dinner arrived I was allowed to return to my party. As I departed my dad told me to “come home when I wanted” which was code for “you’re ungrounded,” and also to have fun but “use my head.” Unbeknownst to them, my departure would be the last time my family would see me as a fully functioning, able bodied young man.

Back at the beach, the start of the undoing occurred when the football a few friends were tossing around landed in the lake. Since it floated out too far it meant someone would have to go in to retrieve it. Having been on my high school’s varsity swim team, and a bit of a waterdog in general, it didn’t take much for me to volunteer to do the job. In retrospect, I’ve always considered that Mistake #1 (i.e. that it wasn’t my damn ball, why the hell did I get wet for it?). At that point in the day a pretty thick cloud cover had rolled in and the weather had cooled off quite a bit. Indeed, it had become downright gloomy. So the fact that I still decided to go for a swim despite that it was no longer decent beach swimming weather I’ve always considered retrospective Mistake #2. Hand in hand with that was Mistake #3: that I didn’t have any swim trunks with me because swimming was never included in our BBQ party plans. Rather, the closest thing I had to a swimsuit was the khaki shorts I was wearing before I changed for dinner, so I changed back into them. One of my all-time best friends Andy decided to take the dip with me, and he just so happened to have his swimsuit in the trunk of his car. That being said, history clearly shows that at that point I could have easily bowed out and just dispatched Andy to fetch the ball by himself, but by then I was all caught up in the moment (i.e. Mistake #4). Besides having just been released from my punishment, on top of that a few of our female friends had recently arrived and I suppose part of me wanted to show off my new beach bod a bit (side note: a personally disappointing junior swim season, a recent heartbreaking split with a girl, and recovery from a month and change old June 1996 lung collapse surgery had all highly motivated me to hit the gym harder that summer). Regardless, not my football + bad swimming weather + no swimsuit + caught up in the moment should probably not have equaled going for a swim that night. But I did, and my future was dramatically changed in an instant.

As for the fateful dive itself, we approached the water like any other excited kids going for a swim in the lake: ran out until the water got so high up on our thighs that we couldn’t run anymore and then dove head first into the water. Happens every day, no big deal. But when I dove into the water that day two factors immediately worked against me: 1) where I dove, 20 or so feet from the shore, it was much more shallow than I anticipated/it should have been (not so fun fact: they dredged the beach shortly after my accident became publicized); and 2) my swim team instincts took over in the moment and I essentially did a tightly tucked chin, racing style, shallow dive (i.e. Mistake #6). Combine those two factors and disaster ensued. Since that kind of dive generally generates a lot of force, the impact of my head hitting the bottom of the lake instantly broke my neck, shattering a few of my neck vertebrae in a few places. Most of the damage occurred at the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae (side note: essentially, if you tuck your chin to your chest the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae are the most prominent bones that stick out on the backside of your neck.) In the very same instant, one of the larger broken pieces got pushed hard into my spinal cord and paralyzed me immediately.

As for me as a whole, the direct result of the diving accident left me face down in the water. All these years later I can still vividly remember the greenish hue of the water, the scratch of the microscopic sand granules as they worked their way behind my contacts, and how the sand felt strangely numb on my hands and fingers. At that point I still had enough neck and shoulder strength to keep my face above water so the fear of drowning never even crossed my mind. My immediate instinctual attempt was to get back up but, as mentioned, all I could move were my head, shoulders, and arms a little bit, so simply getting up did not happen as intended. Even then it hadn’t registered that something was seriously amiss. It wasn’t until Andy, immediately sensing something was wrong, was right there beside me and called for help. Now much more aware that something was definitely wrong I still remained calm knowing that the rescue was under way.

What did get scary, however, was when part way back to the beach one of our friends, who had no idea something was wrong with me, thought we were horsing around and started dunking me in and out of the water. Had I not been in good shape and trained in the water so well that might have gone worse than it did. Anyway, he was quickly corrected and the rescue continued unimpeded. (Side note: I think he always felt really bad about that and thought he was a primary reason for landing me in a wheelchair, but that’s nowhere near true. Moreover, I’ve never had any ill thoughts towards him or blamed him for his actions; it was simply a mistake. You could possibly argue that the extra jarring to my neck affected some of my functional returns, but I’ve always been of the mindset that the major extent of the SCI damage was done upon impact with the lake bottom.)

Once we got me onto the beach and it was obvious that I wasn’t getting up the paramedics were called. My buddy Josh (one of my best friends and at the time “business” partners) tried to keep the mood light by giving me sip of Dew and a drag off his cigar. After a few minutes a few middle aged gals observing things from down the beach arrived on the scene. One was ex-military in some form or something and she immediately began telling some story about how one of her friends had a bad diving accident a few years prior and that he was still just starting to recover. Thanks for the crappy timing, Ms. Captain Buzzkill. I mean who sees a scared kid lying flat on his back on the beach mere moments after an accident and immediatly begins to rant about how messed up he’s about to be? Really? Between me and my friends we essentially told her to take a flying “F” and she went off in a “he just doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation” huff.

Rather, it was quite to the contrary. People may not believe this about me, but I began dealing with my physical plight while I was still lying on my back on that beach. Between both my real world awareness and my Boy Scout lifeguard and safety training I was familiar enough about issues of paralysis to see the real early warning signs. Moreover, Christopher Reeves had just had his highly publicized accident just a year before, so that thought had already crept into the back of my mind as well. My fears were further solidified when after the paramedics arrived I could not wiggle my toes on command. Also, at one point soon thereafter I asked one of my friends about the positioning of my feet: were they lying flat on the beach next to each other? Rather, the answer was that one ankle had been crossed over the other which was contrary to the “feeling” I had about their positioning that whole time. For whatever strange reason, it was at that point that I knew for myself that I would be up against a serious, potentially long term battle with paralysis. And I started dealing with it right then and there: before the cervical collar was put on, before the flat board was brought out, before the ambulance trip was underway, and before any medical diagnosis.

Arriving at the hospital was like entering an area of controlled chaos: multiple medical personnel occupying a small space; IV’s and catheters going in; clothes getting cut off (specifically including my favorite khaki shorts and boxers); getting asked a series of routine, yet menial questions like: What’s the Year? (1996), Who’s the President? (Clinton), Do I have contacts? (yes), Had I been drinking? (no), Was I allergic to anything? (no), etc.; getting set up for X-ray and MRI and other medical exams; being presented with the medical diagnoses; getting put into traction to keep my neck and spine straight; etc.

Of course my most vivid memory of that night was when my parents arrived at the ER. The second I saw them my dad's parting words “use your head” came flooding to my forefront, and in that instant I was immediately heartbroken for thinking that I let them down by not listening (i.e. that ending up in an ER was not using my head). All I could mutter was a quick "I'm sorry" before I burst into tears. That would remain the only time that I cried about my ordeal during my whole rehab period, and a significant amount of time thereafter. And it wasn't even a result of my own pity party, but rather for feeling so guilty about what I was putting my family through.

Still, most of what happened in the ER, etc. went by in a blur. I don’t recall the order of things or how long I was there before they moved me to my room in Intensive Care. I just know that by the time I finally fell asleep, presumably past midnight, it had been one LONG ASS day. The wait through the weekend before my neck fusion surgery would be longer, going in and out of sleep, mostly staring at a dark ceiling, and not knowing if it was am or pm. The two week recovery in ICU after vertebrae neck fusion surgery would be real long too.

Subsequently, I would go on to be hospitalized for the next four and a half months: 2.5 in Eau Claire and 2 at world-renowned SCI rehab facility Craig Hospital in Denver, CO. I was diagnosed as a C-7 incomplete quadriplegic having sustained a catastrophically traumatic spinal cord injury (“SCI”) (more on the details of that in a later post) and would be wheelchair bound for the next 13 years, to this very day.

This post got longer than intended but it’s pretty much the first account about the day of my accident I’ve put out there from my perspective. At the least it might fill in a few gaps for my family and friends. At most, a larger audience might find it interesting. Either way, just writing this kind of stuff down is always personally cathartic. In fact, FYI this is essentially an excerpt from the book I'm writing based on my life’s post-accident experiences (it’s been a work in progress for years). So I'm going to split up my July 12 breakdown into two posts. Check out Part II for some of my thoughts on dealing with thirteen years and counting of “July 12.”