Live the Impossible

Chapter One

My phone chimed with an incoming text message one night while I was washing off my makeup. It was Sydney, a nineteen-year-old woman with a new spinal cord injury. I’d met her recently in a restaurant parking lot, and we discovered we had mutual friends when I noticed she was using one of my old wheelchairs. I gave Sydney my number and told her to text if she had any questions or to call if she wanted to talk. She had reached out several times since then, asking common questions about life with a spinal cord injury. I wondered what she was thinking about tonight.

I read her text message:

Hey, Jenny. The one-year anniversary of my injury is tomorrow, and I know you’ve been through quite a few of these days. This is probably a dumb question, but do you have anything you do to get you through the day or anything that’s helped you?

I pondered her question as I brushed my teeth, changed into my pajama top, and transferred into bed using a sliding board—activities that at one point had been impossible for me to do by myself.

I reflected on the first few years after my injury. Those anniversaries were the hardest as I looked back and craved the life I used to live. A life full of independence, physical ability, and freedom in its many forms.

For the first several years after my accident, my losses were greater than my accomplishments. I depended on others for my every physical need. I had lost my identity as an athlete and floundered as I tried to figure out who I was as a person with a disability. I hated the changes I saw in my body. It took years to accept I was never going to walk again. It took even longer before I could accept myself without needing to prove my worth to the people around me. Life was hard. Well, let me be honest: life is still hard.

The year before my spinal cord injury, when I was fifteen years old, I attended summer camp in North Carolina. One evening, the leaders instructed us to find a quiet place and simply be still and listen. I chose to go outside. Under the clear sky, I lay down and soaked in my surroundings. The bright stars shining in the darkness. The majesty of the mountains. The dense trees of the forest. Insects making a cacophony of sounds. God was simply there. The following words came to me, and I wrote them in my journal.

The path before me is long and narrow

It’s an uphill battle that will be a struggle

I wanted to know the rest of the story, but no other words came to me, even after months of reflection. And I’m glad. I’m glad God didn’t show me all that was to come. It would have paralyzed me—no pun intended.

The path set before me at age sixteen was full of potholes, cobblestones, and gravel. It continues to be bumpy, uncomfortable, and tiresome. But it’s also been beautiful, rewarding, and adventurous.

I wondered where Sydney was on this journey. Only one year had passed since her injury, and I assumed she was asking the same questions I had: Why me? What can God ever accomplish with a broken body? Why wasn’t I headlined on the nightly news as the girl who marched across the stage to receive her high school diploma because of her ceaseless determination? Why?

A future full of possibilities wasn’t yet on my horizon. I didn’t dream of traveling to Mexico. Certainly not to Afghanistan. I didn’t think I’d ever compete as an athlete again. I wouldn’t play tennis or rugby, or row in regattas. Model during New York Fashion Week in this body? Never. And I believed it would be impossible to live on my own as a quadriplegic.

All of this was a future I never dared to imagine.

My story isn’t one of miraculous healing—at least not of physical healing. I didn’t overcome the statistical odds of regaining the use of my body after a spinal cord injury. I still use a wheelchair after more than thirty years.

And that, my friends, is the miracle.

I wondered if Sydney would eventually see the possibilities for her life. Would she get out of her comfort zone, even when it’s terrifying? Would her faith be stretched as mine had? I could only hope that Sydney would have the courage to live the impossible.

Chapter Two

On that hot summer evening of July 10, 1989, my best friend Barbara and I were in the swimming pool in her backyard. My sun-kissed blonde hair sat in a ponytail high on the crown of my head as we lounged on the steps of the pool. Cicadas buzzed and fireflies twinkled in the backyard of her home in the East End of Louisville. A pink and lavender bikini hugged my lean yet muscular sixteen-year-old body.

Barbara’s family had taken me in while my parents and younger brother enjoyed the white beaches of Destin, Florida. I’d passed up a rare family vacation to not miss a day of cheerleading practice before our big competition the following week. As one of the stronger members of the squad, I thought it was important for us to practice as a team throughout the next week.

With the sun beginning to set, Barbara and I chatted about nothing in particular as teenage girls do. She told me about a woman at her church who recently had a brain stem stroke. She was paralyzed from the neck down.

What do you think it would feel like to be paralyzed? Barbara asked.

I don’t know. I wonder if it hurts? I swirled my legs back and forth through the warm water. I’ve heard you can’t feel anything.

Would you know how to move your legs but just couldn’t make them move?

After a few moments of contemplation, I stepped out of the pool and wrapped a towel around myself. I can’t imagine what that would be like, I said.

I walked to the house, entered the basement door, and bounded up the stairs two at a time to take a shower before going to bed.

The next morning, I drove to cheerleading practice in my mom’s blue Toyota Corolla. I’d had my driver’s license for only five months, but I loved the freedom driving had given me. I no longer depended on my mom for rides, and that gave me such a sense of being grown up.

Barbara was taking a college placement test that morning and would come to practice later. She was a year older than me and going into her senior year of high school. We had been friends both in and out of the gym ever since we met in gymnastics after I moved to Kentucky from the suburbs of Chicago when I was almost eleven years old.

Cheerleading practice was typically in the school’s small gym, but the competition would take place outdoors. The team decided to practice in the park across from the school. I grudgingly crossed the street in the muggy summer heat to the grassy area inside the paved loop of Seneca Park where people were taking their morning jogs. We rehearsed our five-minute routine multiple times with its combination of tumbling, cheering, and a choreographed dance program.

Having grown up in competitive gymnastics, my tumbling and jumping skills were what drew me to cheerleading. In my dreams, I still feel my muscles tightening, toes pointing, and the explosive, controlled power needed to propel my body through the air.

After practicing for more than a half hour, while everyone else took a brief break, I continued tumbling.

I began doing a round-off back handspring layout, finishing with the backflip rotating high in the air with my body extended straight. It was a move I had perfected in elementary school.

I hadn’t noticed the grass was wet with the morning’s dew. While taking off for the layout, I saw the trees and sky beginning to rotate as my legs launched me off the grass, but my body didn’t float through the air as it normally did, and the ground appeared too quickly. I didn’t have enough height or rotation to make it back around to my feet.

In a fraction of a second, my forehead hit the ground, and my body crumpled. I was on my stomach, face-first in the grass. I heard a popping sound upon impact.

I was conscious, but it took a moment to realize what had just happened. I couldn’t move or feel any part of my body. My arms and legs were lifelessly sprawled in the grass.

I heard my friends’ feet crushing the grass as they ran to me.

Jenny, are you okay?

I’ve broken my neck. Don’t move me.

I was stating—what seemed to me—an obvious fact. I couldn’t recall where or when I learned that you shouldn’t move someone who was paralyzed, but I knew that’s what had happened.

As I lay on my stomach with my face in the grass, my main worry wasn’t that I couldn’t move. What if bugs crawl toward me? I won’t be able to get away from them!

Other than the fear of those imagined bugs, I felt no panic. No fear.

I heard Barbara’s mom kneel at my right side. Mary Ann had previously worked as a medical technologist in an emergency room. Whether it was her training or, as she believes, a prompting from God, she had the instinct to ask an important question.

Jenny, can you feel this? she asked while touching somewhere on my body. How about here?

No, I told her. Mary Ann, I think we need to pray.

Having grown up in church and participated in youth group and Bible studies, turning to God in this critical situation was my first response.

Sitting next to me in the grass, Mary Ann prayed out loud. I don’t remember what she said, but I knew this was going to be one of the most important prayers of my life. At some level deep in my soul, I understood that what just happened was life-changing. I was going to need to rely on God in ways I never had.

Mary Ann told me an ambulance was on its way. Controlling the situation the only way I could, I realized that if I was going to a hospital, then I needed identification and insurance. The insurance card is at my house on a shelf near the kitchen.

I don’t think we need to worry about that right now, Jenny.

As we waited for an ambulance to arrive, someone brought a bag of ice from the school cafeteria and placed it on the back of my neck. But I couldn’t feel the ice. Other than the grass tickling my face and the warm sun beating down on my head, I felt nothing. No tingling or burning. My neck didn’t throb with pain. It was as if my body didn’t exist below my head.

I heard the ambulance pull onto the thick grass and saw the paramedic’s shoes approaching me, step by step.

He leaned down at my left side. We’re going to take good care of you, Jenny. Okay?

Okay.

I see you have a necklace around your neck. I’m going to have to cut that off.

Dread rushed over me. The simple gold cross didn’t hold much monetary value, but I wore it to remind me of the foundation of Christian faith on which I lived. The necklace held memories of gymnastics, youth group, summer camp, and playing the piano.

Please don’t cut it, I begged. I was more concerned about my necklace than my current physical condition.

The paramedic must have heard the panic in my voice.

Let me see what I can do. He scooted the necklace around and unclasped it without cutting it.

I let out a sigh of relief.

All right. Now we’re going to put a neck brace on you and get you onto the stretcher.

I felt the hard foam and plastic rest against my chin and the back of my skull as he placed the brace on my neck. As they rolled my body onto my back, my eyes no longer focused on the green grass, but the bright blue sky.

I’d later learn that as they cautiously turned my body onto a stretcher and loaded me in the ambulance, Barbara had arrived and was leaning against a tree, crying. Mary Ann had to make the heart-wrenching choice between comforting her daughter or accompanying me to the hospital. She climbed into the ambulance.

The ride to the hospital was not what I expected. Isn’t an ambulance supposed to go fast and have sirens?

Instead, it was quiet and felt like we were inching ever so slowly through the streets. Only now do I understand that the EMS driver was taking every precaution to keep my neck and spinal cord stabilized.

Can you breathe okay, Jenny? the paramedic repeatedly asked.

After hearing this question several times, I started to get paranoid. Can I breathe okay? I took a deep breath. Yes, I could breathe. I didn’t know that a spinal cord injury similar to mine could have prevented me from breathing without assistance.

In an attempt to overcome the fear of the unknown that was beginning to churn deep within me, I focused my thoughts on my plans for the rest of the day.

Mary Ann, will you call the guys and tell them I may not be at band practice?

When we arrived at the nearby hospital, the paramedics pulled the stretcher out of the ambulance. With my neck in the brace, I could see only what was directly above me, mostly the tops of people’s heads. I watched the ceiling tiles pass by above me as I was pushed into the ER. I heard the emergency room staff tell me they were going to cut off my clothes.

First my necklace. Now my clothes?

I had saved money and recently bought the new blue spandex shorts.

I just got them. Do you have to cut them? I asked.

I still felt nothing below my neck, but the sound of scissors cutting fabric confirmed that they did, indeed, need to cut off my clothing.

I don’t remember much after that, except being put back into another ambulance. As we drove across town, my head ached with a dull pain. I felt the ambulance descend a steep entrance to Kosair Children’s Hospital in downtown Louisville.

My grandma had arrived in Louisville a week earlier for a visit, and she was still at our house with plans to drive to Cincinnati that day. A pastor from my church called her to ask her to come to the hospital immediately. After arriving at the hospital and hearing the critical nature of my injury, Grandma called my parents in Florida.

Jenny’s been in an accident, Grandma told my mom.

How bad is the car?

Since I was a relatively new driver, that seemed like the most reasonable explanation for an accident. After thirteen years of gymnastics, no one expected me to be severely injured while tumbling.

In a daze, my mom purchased an airline ticket, packed her suitcase, and caught a flight to Louisville all within a few hours. Only after seeing my grandma and three of the moms from school waiting for her at the gate did Mom realize the seriousness of my injury.

Mary Ann walked up, hugged her, and simply said, It’s bad.

In the meantime, my dad, along with my brother and a friend, drove twelve hours from Destin to Louisville in a heavy rainstorm. Every year on the anniversary of my injury, my brother lovingly—teasingly—reminds me how I ruined his Florida vacation.

The ten days I spent in intensive care are hazy. My mom spent each night with me. I don’t recall in what order things happened, but I have vivid memories. Some I still laugh about, recognizing that even in the ICU, I was a typical teenager. Other memories break my heart knowing that no sixteen-year-old should ever go through an experience like mine.

In the dark room, flat on my back in bed, there was no day or night. The medication the nurses gave me had me in and out of consciousness.

With my parents at my bedside, I remember the neurosurgeon coming into the room and saying matter-of-factly, You have damaged your spinal cord at the sixth and seventh vertebrae. You will never walk again.

With the pretentious attitude of a teenager, I replied, "I know. I told you that."

After all, I had told my friends I’d hurt my spinal cord.

But it would take months to understand the full impact of an injury. A spinal cord injury is so much more than just not walking. An injury in the cervical, or neck, region at the sixth and seventh vertebrae is called a C6-7 spinal cord injury. The injury paralyzes its victim from the chest down and affects the hands, wrists, and arms. When I was in intensive care, I could shrug my shoulders and slightly move my wrists to the beat of the heart monitor. As the swelling decreased in my spinal cord, it was possible I’d regain more use of my arms, but only time would tell. The doctor told me there was only a one percent chance of ever walking again—a statistic that was accurate at that time.

Within the first few days, I remember the room feeling crowded with a doctor, several nurses, and my mom. I heard the whirring of a drill. I felt pressure, but no pain, while the doctor drilled long metal rods into my skull near my ears for traction. The doctor had administered a shot to prevent the pain, but my brain was so muddled I couldn’t understand why it didn’t hurt. The doctor hoped the weight pulling my skull away from my body would realign my dislocated vertebrae and relieve the pressure, swelling, and bruising on my spinal cord. The