You can live your ‘impossible’
“I can’t live like this anymore.” My friend Gene later told me these were the first words I said to the doctor when I checked into the hospital ER in more pain than I’d ever known in the 42 years following a climbing accident in 1979. Gene is also the only person who has witnessed the increasing pain I have carried around for the last three years.
A couple weeks later, with no feeling from my sternum down to my feet, I discovered that pressure on my spinal cord had resulted in a serious spinal cord injury.
The good news is, following one more spinal fusion, I am now out of pain. The not-so-good news is that the lower part of my body still isn’t working well. However, I am in six hours of intensive therapy daily, and working as hard as I can.
Lying in my hospital bed following surgery I became a daily follower of the Olympics, and many times a day I saw the Toyota commercial flash across the screen — “Start your impossible.” That resonated with me because I felt like “impossible” was exactly what I was faced with.
On that same channel, I heard the story of Sam Willoughby, an Olympian biker in his early 20’s, who’d had an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. That could easily have been me in 1979 at the age of 40, and yet for the last 42 years I have walked, unlike Sam, who will never walk again. However, if you read his story, what you discover is, in spite of being paralyzed, Sam Willoughby is having a rich life.
My rich life has taken an unexpected turn. I am faced with recalculating. START YOUR IMPOSSIBLE is my challenge.