The man who soared against all odds
A skydiving incident left Curt Kmiecek, 61, paralysed from the neck down, but he wasn’t about to accept his fate lying down.
DANA Kurtz pointed to an infinitesimal speck of white in the blue sky, shimmering as it caught the sunlight. “That’s him right there,” she said. It was a plane and inside was her husband Curt Kmiecek, 61, who two years ago suffered a spinal injury in a skydiving incident so severe that it left him paralysed from the neck down. And yet, here he was, jumping from a plane, again.
The sky divers tumbled from the plane appearing from the ground to be the size of ants, black dots speedily sailing to Earth under bright parachutes. Most came down quickly, skidding to the ground on the tarmac. But Kmiecek took his time. His blueand- white parachute made slow circles over the green expanse of fields in Ottawa in the province of Ontario, Canada.
In a tandem jump with his friend and instructor Donovan Bartlett, director of maintenance at Skydive Chicago, the two drifted lazily to the ground and landed like a feather on the grass.
A small crowd of friends and family, including his brother- in- law, his yoga instructor and his daughter, applauded as Kmiecek and Kurtz walked towards them slowly, holding hands.
“It was awesome,” Kmiecek said with a smile. “It’s kind of interesting. Me and Donovan were under canopy, talking about life, the universe, everything. It was awesome.”
It’s hard to believe that only two years ago, Kmiecek had quite a different skydiving experience.
The jump on July 7, 2014, was like any other.
Kmiecek – an Illinois native who joined the US Air Force in 1975 and then its Special Operations Command Joint Forces Command a decade later – guessed that he’s jumped at least 2,000 times. After retiring from the military, he started a private investigator business. He also did some military consulting.
On that day two years ago, Kmiecek was dropping through the air when his parachute opened faster than it should have. The sudden jolt whiplashed his neck and savaged his spinal cord. Floating hundreds of metres above the ground, he couldn’t even lift his arms. All he could do was laugh. “I thought I’d broken my arms,” he said. Unable to steer the canopy, he passed helplessly over the Dayton Dam on the Fox River. As he hovered above the rushing falls at the dam, Kmiecek was convinced he was about to die.
“I thought, I can’t survive that,” he said. “I can’t get out of that water.”
Instead, he landed in the nearby trees. Found suspended in branches, unconscious and barely breathing, he was airlifted to an area hospital.
Kmiecek was diagnosed as a quadriplegic, paralysed from the neck down.
Doctors in Chicago told him he’d never walk again, and other area medical personnel met seemingly small signs of improvements with scepticism, he said.
An active man, a life- long pilot, a sky diver and a skier, Kmiecek was devastated, but refused to accept the diagnosis.
“They treated him like he would never recover,” Kurtz said. “He wore his special forces beret ( during therapy). It was a message that he wasn’t a quitter.”
For Kmiecek, hope eventually came in the form of Patrick Rummerfield, the first quadriplegic known to fully recover from his injuries. He had sustained a serious spinal cord injury in an alcohol- related crash in 1974 and recovered, even when doctors said he wouldn’t walk again. Rummerfield has since done marathons, triathlons and raced cars.
Like Kmiecek, when Rummerfield wiggled his toes shortly after his injury, a nurse told him that it was an involuntary twitch. When Kurtz told Rummerfield her husband’s story via e- mail, he called minutes later to offer help. Weeks later, with Rummerfield’s assistance, Kmiecek was a patient at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, which is known worldwide for treating spinal cord injuries.
Therapy was exhausting, but he soon made strides. In his two weeks there, he was made to perform the same small tasks thousands of times, received electrical stimulation treatment and walked on a treadmill submerged in water to correct his gait.
On arrival, the most Kmiecek could do was walk a few belaboured steps at a time. After two weeks of all- day physical therapy at the institute, walking was easier. He could walk 198m in six minutes. He went scuba diving. Kmiecek could drive. And, of course, skydive.
“After 18 years in the special ops, we don’t think of anything less than mission accomplished,” he said.
Institute physician Dr Christina Sadowski, who did not treat Kmiecek but knows him personally, said his recovery has been remarkable. Only about one in four patients she’s seen can hope to make such progress, she said.
“He’s relentless,” she said. “He won’t stop until he achieves what he wants to achieve. That’s what it takes to overcome a very stubborn neurological injury. And from what I know about him, I’d say he has a pretty healthy dose of hope.”
He’s returned to Kennedy Krieger twice. Therapy has become his full- time job, but he also helps prepare clients at his wife’s law firm for trials and depositions.
Kmiecek and Kurtz have spent many nights ceremonially burning the things he doesn’t need anymore: the make- shift shower in the laundry room and wheelchair ramps. They’ve rid themselves of a power chair, a lift, the walker, the handicap- accessible van. All he needs to get around now is a cane.
The couple, who have been married since 2007, make a strong team. Since the incident, Kurtz has learned to cook and has been a constant source of support for her husband. When a physical therapist isn’t committed to the task of full recovery, they find a new one. They’ve had five already.
On the tarmac, Kmiecek said that anyone can accomplish anything if they want to. Just like him. With any luck, he’ll do this again a year from now.
But next time, he said he’ll be going solo. – Chicago Tribune/ Tribune News Service