Dear all,
For Easter I would like to share a story about a person who inspires me. I am glad he is my friend. I hope this story also inspires all of you:
Steven is not yet 30 years old and he is in a power wheelchair with head support. He has been injuried for 3 years and can’t do anything for himself. His fingers don’t move, they are swollen and pudgy. His legs twitch uncontrollably; he can’t turn his head to look at you when you talk to him.
At 27 he was a professional, sponsored athlete, lived life on his own terms, had a beautiful wife, 2 young children and super popular on the circuit with loads of friends. He was injured while doing a sophisticated BMX bike trick on camera in front of a live audience — everyone watched him land on his head and break his neck.
He was in the hospital for weeks, on a ventilator, born into a new body that was completely helpless when hours prior he was in top form, and among an elite group of BMX athletes. He didn’t recognize his own body anymore — he thought his body was encased in hard plastic. No one knew if he was going to make it because his diaphram muscles weren’t strong enough to breathe on their onw for a long time.
His friends and family rallied around him, but his wife started drinking and popping pills. People began to notice her behavior and told him that she wasn’t stable, but he refused to believe them. He eventually left the hospital and moved back home to live with her and the children. She couldn’t take it, popped more pills and began to endanger his life and the lives of their children. She gave him the wrong doses of medication nearly killing him, he got left outside for 6 hours because she was passed out upstairs, and she taunted him for being paralyzed on top of it all (I canot share the specific examples because they are beyond cruel into torture). He was so drugged up that he didn’t notice — his friend did and stepped in. Someone who barely knew him offered to be his caregiver and flew down to live with him.
You would never know the horror of what happened to him becuase he is such a positive person.
He drives around in a giant sponsored Rockstar van with a posse of people with him wherever he goes. His new girlfriend looks like the flag girl at the track and watches out for him – she is super affectionate with him and doesn’t give a crap that he’s paralyzed. John, his caregiver and also a former athlete, organizes the whole day from changing out his catheters to stretching him out, to hooking him to the stim machines. Steven always has to time to chat and socialize with the rest of us in rehab. He is always curious about other people and offers encouragement to the rest of us simply by sharing his experience and his positive attitude. He and I often talk about what it was like in the hospital becuase there is simply nothing else like it – the sheer terror and disconnectedness is overwhelming. And no one can comprehend it unless you’ve been through it.
Steven, because he is such a connected guy, fundraises for stem cell research and has gotten donations from the likes of Oakley and other companies on the tour. Han Kierstead, the UCI researcher, is working on a cure for people like Steven, but he told me last week that even when he can finally grow a new nerve into a paralyzed muscle from the spinal cord, it will never be completely functioning as before.
So on Easter, I ask everyone to pray that one day there will be enough of a cure so that one day Steven can get out of the chair, walk to the bathroom and brush his teeth by himself — like you and I do every morning.
Thanks all
Tonya
