Survive & Advance: 1 year later

So Sunday April 7th was the one year anniversary of my accident and my surgery.  I wanted to write and publish it on that exact day but I didn't really feel like writing it.  I am not sure why.  I guess I was too busy thinking about it - or forgetting it - to really write anything.  Even when I did get started, it took a bit of an effort.  Though I had been thinking about this post for a while, I guess some anniversaries are best if they quietly come and go.  And it was appropriate it came on a Sunday.  I was able to be with my family - the only place I want to be.

Nevertheless, I should say, the title and theme of this post was inspired by the ESPN series 30 for 30.  I have written about this series before.  If you haven't watched any, I highly recommend them.  A recent episode called "Survive & Advance" tells the story of the NC State basketball team and their heroic run to become the 1983 NCAA basketball Division 1 champions.  Secondly, the story tells of their coach, Jim Valvano, who battled cancer and died at the tender age of 47.

Valvano was a charismatic leader and speaker who in recent years has become as well known for the foundation he started at the end of his life as he was for his years as a coach.  Valvano was also an announcer for ESPN for a number of years.  His "Don't give up, don't ever give up" speech became a historic moment for for ESPN and their awards show, The ESPYs.

I must say "Survive & Advance" is one the best things I have watched on TV in a long time.  It shows one of the beauties of life when people or groups of people "get on a roll" and everything seems to right, particularly in contrast to a previous period when nothing seemed to go right.  The 1982-1983 season was an up and down one for NC State.  They had a solid team but never seemed to be able to get it all together until they were able to win the ACC conference tournament which was the only way to get into the NCAA tournament.  Then they strung together another set of wins to make it to the Final Four and the championship game.

Within that streak they beat Ralph Sampson's Virginia team twice.  They beat Michael Jordan's North Carolina team once and then beat Hakeem Olajuwon's Houston team in the championship game.  They beat the team with the best college basketball player of all time in Sampson, the team with the best basketball player of all time in Jordan, and the team with the best center of all time in Olajuwon.  And their wins included overtimes, last minute shots, and an array of circumstances where they simply got lucky and the gods were shining favorably upon them.

What like about their story is that it shows success and survival are not mutually exclusive.  Sometimes survival equals success.  Sometimes success is survival.  And sometimes it is not.  Coach Valvano died but continues to be a success.  Sometimes surviving allows you to advance.  And surviving isn't always pretty but it is better than the alternative.  It gives you a chance to fight another day.  It gives you a chance to learn about mistakes - albeit not fatal ones, hopefully - and move forward.  It allows you to use what you have learned and go at it again.  And sometimes that is all you need: just a chance to play again.  Just a chance to put on the uniform and lace up the shoes.  Just a chance to live again.  And maybe, if you are lucky, live better than you did before.

For me, I can't come up with a better way to describe the past year of my life.  Me and my family survived my accident but I am not looking at it as something that has stalled me.  Yes physically I was limited for a while but now I am physically stronger than perhaps I have ever been.  The hip is somewhat of a liability but the rest of my body is advancing beyond where it was.  And the hip will catch up.  And the hip will advance where it was even before the accident.

In some ways the accident helped me highlight areas of my life and myself which weren't as I wanted.  I was doing okay but the fragility of the past year gave me perspective that I can do more.  I can be more that I was and that I am today.  The surviving helped me get a view on how I want to advance and how I want to actualize myself.  I know how I want to do that physically but with my career, my writing, and my role as a parent, I am certainly evolving and seeing where I could go.  I am at the very beginning stages of that journey.

Survival has certainly made me thankful for simply being alive and walking and being able to care for my kids and my family, but it hasn't ended there.  I could be content and be at peace with life as it is. And all I have been through I doubt anyone would question that.  And in many ways I have.  I don't want more things.  I don't want a bigger house and fancier cars.  But I do want provide more for my kids.  I want to make sure I can give them as many opportunities and are as cared for as possible.  I want more vacations and quality time.  I want to ensure their education is covered.  That is my goal.

To achieve that, I think, I want to be more than I am today.  I am setting big goals for my career.  I am setting big goals for my writing.  I want to see where my skills can take me.  And the accident highlighted that.  Perhaps it highlighted the road a little better.  It is a little dim in some areas but because of what I have been through, I know myself better.  I know what drives me.  And I need to find the right forum where I can use what drives me to be successful.

Coach Valvano gives some great encouragement   He says "How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it."

So one year later, I walk a little different.  And I live a little different.  But I live better.  I feel better.  I feel happier.  I have survived.  And I am advancing.  But now I know it is a lifelong process.  And the advancing may require more survival.  But I have survived before.  Breaking a hip really sucks but in some ways I believe, unfortunately, I needed it to happen to begin to become who I was meant to be.  Destiny is an overused term but there are key moments in life that set us straight and my injury was one for me.  

Like I said before I wouldn't change a thing.  The accident means to too much to me at this point.  It has taught me too much.  And I could say it taught me how to survive but that would be only the first half of a game.  It has really taught me how to advance.  And the advancing never ends.  That's the beauty.  I have many more years to advance.  Coach Valvano didn't get chance to advance his life as far as he wanted but his spirit and his legacy lives on.  

I have survived.  It’s time to build a legacy.

Thanks for reading...

Only the Lonely

Last year, Easter was the day after I had surgery on my hip.  This is not my anniversary post, however.  That will be on April 7th, the official date of my injury.  Today is a day where the moment of injury - the exact feelings I felt, came rushing back to me.  Ironically it came on a day where one year ago I was feeling it.  It was if God wanted to me reflect and remember and examine what had happened.  I guess Easter is a good day to do it, given the coming back to life stuff and all.

The moment came as I was watching the NCAA men's basketball tournament and a player on Louisville named Kevin Ware jumped in the air to block a shot, landed awkwardly, and broke his leg.  And it was broken so badly that the bone was sticking out of his shin.  The scene was so gruesome that players and coaches were overwhelmed and brought to tears.  Some fell to the floor, overwrought with emotion.

While the care and compassion for a fallen teammate was touching, my focus was was on Ware himself.  He was on the ground, first alone and then with a cadre of tending medical staff.  After a certain period of examination they lifted him to the stretcher and took him to the ambulance where he was taken to a local hospital.

It was those scenes that brought a series of year old memories and emotions back.  I sat watching Ware and remember the feeling when I realized I was hurt, really hurt.  After falling off my bike following an ill-fated attempt to traverse a set of railroad tracks, my initial reaction was to try and get up.  I wanted to tell myself I was okay.  It was just a bad fall, to result a bad bruise, to heal in a few weeks and I'd be back to normal.  But I couldn't get up.  And I was in serious pain.  It was feeling I had never felt before in my life.  I was really, really hurt.  And it wasn't just the pain.  I felt hopeless and scared.  It was beginning of a loneliness I had never felt before.

After I fell, the two friends I was riding with caught up to me and assessed me.  I again tried to get up.  They encouraged me to stay down.  I communicated my pain level.  After some conversation, we decided I needed an ambulance.  In that time, some random strangers stopped.  It was raining and the concrete on which I was lying was cold so they covered me with jackets and held others over me to keep me dry.  It was true humanitarian behavior. 

Then the police arrived.  Then the firemen arrived.  Then the paramedics arrived.  Before I knew it there were more than 12 people around me.  Some were directing traffic, some helping my friends to figure out what to do with the bikes, and others tending to me, getting ready to get me into the ambulance.  As I saw Ware lying on the floor of the basketball court, my heart broke because I remembered this moment.  I felt sorry he was so hurt being so young and in a game to get his team to the Final Four.  More so, I felt sorry for what he was feeling.

Even though in moments like his and mine you have people who want to help you and get you the right medical attention, there is nothing anyone can do to help you feel better on the inside.  You lay there in pain and scared, but you lay there alone and no one knows how you feel.  Ware had thousands of people watching him in the stadium and millions more on television, all probably willing to help the poor kid, but he might as well have been alone. 

Alone in a stadium meant for thousands and all you can hear is your own breathing.  There was no one that knew what it was like to be one moment helping your team to a national championship and the next wondering if you will be able to walk right again much less play.  Such is the fragility of life.

As a group lifted Ware to the stretcher, I recall when I told the fireman and paramedics to go slow and easy.  I remember how I braced myself for the moment when they had to roll me to the side to slide the stretcher underneath me.  I remember the helplessness of being lifted into the ambulance - because I could no longer lift myself.  I felt pathetic.  

As Ware was lifted to the stretcher and rolled out of the stadium, everyone clapped.  Whether he heard them or not, I don't know but I am sure he was feeling something new.  Ware is an elite athlete.  A good player on arguably the best college basketball team in the country. He has never been wheeled or lifted anywhere.  He jumped over people.  He has more athletic ability than 99% of the world.  And now he can't even walk.  His bones were no longer even on the inside of his body.

I know I felt marginalized, so I can't even imagine what Ware felt.  Entering the ambulance  I knew I was entering a new place; a place I never imagined I would see.  Ambulances, you may or may not know, are lonely, sterile places.  They are seemingly built without shock absorbers.

Entering the ambulance is like entering an MRI machine.  It is cold, cavernous, claustrophobia inducing.  Once I got into the ambulance, they went through a series of tests to check me out.  They began the process of getting an IV into me.  This required removal of my jacket and since I was in too much pain to remove it, it had to be cut off.  A two hundred dollar cycling sliced to pieces.  At the time I didn't care because I was in so much pain.  Now I care even less.  I probably wouldn't wear it anymore.  As an aside, I sold the bike I crashed on several months after the accident.  It had too many bad memories

Thus began the ride to hospital where I received x-rays and was examined by nurses and doctors.  I was first told I had a hip fracture and needed replacement.  Then I was told my hip could be saved.  Then I waited and waited until I had surgery around 8 PM that night.  While my wife was with me the whole time and provided more comfort and support than I could ever ask, I remember those moments as confusing.  One moment I am riding a bike 20 miles an hour for many, many miles, the next I can't walk and I am heading into surgery.  I was fast, athletic, powerful, independent.  Then I was immobile, confused, unsure, dependent on strangers and everyone around me.

For Ware, it had to be much worse.  He was playing in a huge game, perhaps the biggest of his life.  And he went from running and jumping down the court to prepping for surgery.  The mental shift for me was difficult.  It must have been crushing for Ware.  The mental shift would be too much.  The change in direction nearly impossible to handle.  On the bright side, he had a successful surgery and his team won.  But now he is in a hospital bed, in another city, unable to play.  He is unable to be with his team; the people who he has spent more time with than anyone for the past six months.

Today, the day after the surgery, is probably the most crushing for Ware.  You can be tough in the moment but today he sits there with the recovery ahead of him.  For me, that was last Easter.  I remember being at the hospital while the rest of my family gathered to celebrate.  I remember after my wife left that evening to care for the kids to ask her to send someone to be with me.  Graciously, my two brothers in law came as well as some other friends of the family.

And while at the moment it helped, it some ways it just magnified that I was now - albeit temporarily - different.  I needed drugs and crutches and days off from work.  I was alone with my pain; alone with my injury.  No one else I knew was dealing with this type of injury at this very time.

And that loneliness lingered.  It lingered through crutches and moving to a new house.  It lingered as I continued to walk funny.  But over time it took a metamorphosis of sorts into a quiet peace.  An acceptance of sorts.  A confidence.  A knowledge that while all the comfort and friends and love in the world helps, it doesn't matter unless you come to  peace that in the end sometimes you have to go at it alone.  No one else lives in your heart, your head, your soul.

I really hope Kevin Ware makes a full recovery from his injury.  Initial news reports say that he will.  And only time will tell if he will be the player he was but to me it doesn't matter. If he listens to the loneliness he will end up being a better man.  And that's what is important.

So Happy Easter to all.  Its okay to be lonely.  It's okay to be hurt.  You'll recover.  You'll know yourself better and find a better place.

Best of luck Kevin Ware.  We are all rooting for you.  But you don't need us.  You have it in you already.

Thanks for reading...