 (This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.)
The second anniversary of the accident came and went on May 20th, but meant little to Beth other than a reminder of progress made. She wheeled herself—on easy surfaces and low inclines. She moved from the higher bed to the lower wheelchair seat on her own—sometimes. She completed the easiest steps of getting dressed in bed—when she had extra time. In her wheelchair, she hooked one elbow under a push handle to anchor her body while reaching down with the opposite hand to pick items up from the floor—easy to grip, light things. She tried to get in and out of the car—with help always needed over the threshold. She attempted to put on a swim cap—before handing it to me. Beth started to think of herself as a swimmer after the Michigan and Ohio Wheelchair Games. I could not—should not, would not—dampen her enthusiasm, even though we knew nothing about competitive swimming or traveling with a wheelchair. I booked flights, a hotel, and a rental car for the USA Swimming Disability Championships in Seattle. To save money, only Beth and I would go. Her wheelchair games classification and swim times would not count, so I requested the needed classification appointment on the day before the national swim meet. However, she also needed qualifying times in right away. We drove to our first USA Swimming meet in early June, two years after Beth’s injury. It was a wholly different kind of competition compared to the swim meets at the wheelchair games. The sheer size of the complex intimidated us. The 50-meter pool at Oakland University in Michigan stretched on and on. Able-bodied teenagers packed the large deck. In the upper level bleachers, the audience filled every seat with others standing. A deck pass on a cord dangled from my neck, giving me access with the other adults, all coaches or officials. The elevated deck by the blocks added significant distance to the water. I literally dropped her into her lane. Any stroke could be used during a freestyle race. Beth had one option, the backstroke. The other girls in the same race swam the forward freestyle, the fastest for most everyone else. They finished and waited at the ending wall while Beth swam the last 50 meters by herself. The extra 60 seconds abruptly stopped the fast pace of the meet. Teenagers in the next race waited impatiently, ready to show how easy it was to step up on the blocks and dive in. Swimming 100 meters without rest breaks for the first time, Beth swerved from side to side through the last long length of the pool, sometimes hitting a lane divider with her hand or arm. With circling arms faltering, Beth’s head tipped and her body turned to find and touch the ending wall, making it obvious that she had never been coached. In front of several hundred spectators and swimmers, I bent forward very low from the elevated deck to reach her shoulders, with the deck pass dangling in my face. I lost my balance and almost fell on top of her. Staring continued as Shawn and I each grabbed a shoulder to lift Beth out of the water and into the wheelchair with her legs straight out and bouncing. I broke the spasms since I could do it faster. The electronic timing system clocked her at a plodding three and a half minutes, enough to qualify for nationals as an S2 swimmer. On the horizon, Seattle waited for us, the place where our course would change.
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 (This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.)
A week after the Michigan games, Beth, John, and I met the Toledo Raptors in Columbus for the Ohio Wheelchair Games, a much larger event. Our team stayed two nights in a hotel close to the OSU campus. In the lobby, one of the teenage boys showed off with extreme wheelies. When his manual chair tipped backwards to the floor, the front desk staff rushed over while Beth and her friends laughed to tears. (When his chair toppled back, the boy tipped his head safely forward, chin to chest.) Karaoke in the hotel lounge turned a bit wild. Returning to the Jesse Owens stadium as a participant, Beth sat with her friends near the track while they waited for their turns. I watched the races from the stands with other family members. She also tried outdoor field events and threw a discus for the first time. She laughed when it plopped near her wheelchair. For the weightlifting competition in a gym, I helped Beth recline face up on a narrow elevated bench with a barbell suspended over her chest. For quads, the officials started with no weight added to the barbell. Beth’s arms were not strong enough to budge it from the rack. At all. Despite nearly two years of intense physical therapy and pushing herself in a manual wheelchair. It was a reality check, a reminder of the severity of her disability. Beth quickly moved on to her favorite sport with her slow backstroke. Ben joined us to watch the meet at an OSU pool. Swimmers with a wide range of abilities and ages gathered for their races, with most of them not aiming for a specific time. With no announcer, there was no easy way of evaluating the races, but it didn’t matter. Encouragement reigned. Before the table tennis competition, Beth practiced at an open table with me for the first time since her spinal cord injury. She held the paddle with the tenodesis grip, using her wrist to move her left hand up, perpendicular to her forearm. Other quads strapped the paddle to their hand. She depended on the armrests of her wheelchair as she reached from side to side. Her balance as she sat in her wheelchair was not solid; if she leaned over to pick something up off the floor, she would fall down—unless she first hooked the opposite elbow on a push handle. During the competition, she dropped the paddle twice, and picked it up herself. Some watched closely, perhaps to try the same thing later on their own. Another Raptors mom enthusiastically congratulated Beth for winning several ping-pong games. All three of my kids learned ping-pong from my mom, the first woman in Lorain County, Ohio to teach physical education back in the early 1950’s. My mom also played field hockey and basketball at OSU where she met my dad. My dad liked to point out Beth’s double dimples and blue eyes, both of which she shared with him—along with a stubborn streak. A banquet in a large ballroom ended the Ohio Wheelchair Games. I joined in the applause when Beth was surprised with the Rookie of the Year award. Our Seattle trip was approaching fast.  (This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.) The Michigan Wheelchair Games took place in May at an old high school complex with several dozen participants, plus family members. Since Beth was a first-timer, officials measured her muscle strength, tested her in the water, and assigned her the S2 classification on a scale of S1 to S14. Those labeled S1 and S2 had the most severe disabilities and the least physical function. The track events were first. Beth didn't have a racing chair and her friends' chairs didn't fit, so she stayed in her own wheelchair and pushed herself around the track. I joined a small group of enthusiastic, cheering spectators. The atmosphere at the pool could barely be called competitive. Races included both sexes with any classification. Beth's times would be compared with other S2 female teenagers. Since there weren’t any others at the meet, she would automatically take first place in her races. That was our first hint that few quads could move independently in the water. I lowered Beth to the deck first, and then into the water at the side of the pool where a gym mat had been placed. Minutes before, we had to ask how the lane numbers corresponded to the lanes. For the first time, she treaded water longer than usual to dunk under lane dividers with effort to get to her assigned lane. For the first race of her first meet, Beth swam a very slow, sloppy backstroke for 50 yards, two lengths of the pool, not knowing how to push off at the start, how to turn at the wall, or how to approach the finish. It also was the first race for another teenager who had never been alone in the water before and could not swim any strokes. It was painful to watch her unhappy struggle. She zigzagged in her lane before gently bumping her head on the ending wall, panicking, and going under. Her father immediately jumped in with his clothes on, when he could have reached her easily from the deck. I wondered if parents of a child born with a disability tended to be overprotective? Though I had no right to judge after failing to protect Beth the night of her spinal cord injury. “At my first swim meet, I met Cheryl, a Paralympic swimmer, and her husband Shawn, a Paralympic coach,” Beth said. “They encouraged me to compete nationally.” We learned from Shawn and Cheryl that just five weeks ahead, the annual USA Swimming Disability Championships would be held in Seattle. When another swimmer, a para, asked if she should go, too, Shawn hedged a bit. I jumped to the conclusion that Beth possessed some kind of exceptional swimming skill that wasn’t apparent to me. (She didn't.) Shawn told her to go to Seattle and “see the possibilities,” a clear invitation to adventure. Our world shifted, again, as it had the night of the car accident. During the two and a half hour drive home from the Michigan games, Beth played John Mayer’s new CD, and sang along with her new favorite tune, No Such Thing. It became her buoyant anthem to the future, replayed again and again, the lyrics etched in our memories — infused with the essence of vague but powerful anticipation. “I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world,” Beth sang. “Just a lie you got to rise above. ...I am invincible, as long as I’m alive!” I wished that were true.  (This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.)
With growing confidence, Beth filled her time with the school newspaper, homework, volunteering, clubs, Raptors, and another high school musical. She also decided to get back in the pool as soon as the doctor’s ban ended. Towards the end of Beth’s sophomore year of high school, she was free to go to Green Springs for physical therapy once instead of twice after school. “Laraine said that when therapy gets in the way of life, then it is time to move on,” Beth explained. The last physical therapy session, almost two years post-injury, ended with the anticipated rite of passage. The final test: while Beth dramatically finished her last pushup, she pushed off her favorite therapist who was leaning on her back. Laraine dramatically stepped away. Everyone clapped. A sad and happy moment, the end of an era, though we would continue to meet Laraine and her students in Toledo every few months. “I continued physical therapy as an outpatient for two years,” Beth said. “Three times a week at first then going to twice and then once a week, we drove to St. Francis after school to workout for about two hours. Recently I ‘graduated’ from physical therapy since I get plenty of exercise on my own now and since I always am extremely busy.” At another seminar for physical therapy students, Beth enthusiastically shared a milestone. Leaning back in her wheelchair, she took an elastic band off her wrist and held it in her teeth. She used both hands and arms to scoot forward in the chair and then lean back. From that position, she reclaimed the elastic with the one finger she could move. Her smile wavered a moment as she concentrated on intricate degrees of progress. When the second loop secured a messy ponytail, she took a bow with a flourish and a ta-dah! Sweet 16 on her April birthday, Beth returned to the water. A physical therapy student, Colleen, offered to help at the University of Toledo pool on a Saturday. After observing the usual floating with arms waving underwater, Colleen, a college swimmer, provided advice and a hand of support under her back while Beth rotated her arms, one at a time. Next, they tried circling both arms together, causing her head to dip under water. None of it came naturally. Beth had water safety lessons as a toddler, but had never been a swimmer before the accident. With the first wheelchair games a week away, we met Colleen a second time. They focused on the traditional, alternating backstroke, taxing muscles and stamina. For the first time, she could swim the backstroke—awkward and faltering. Beth slept through the hour ride home, dreaming. Here’s Beth's video on how she puts her hair up: www.ablethrive.com/basics/putting-hair-up-in-a-ponytail |
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