Since my days in Jr. high up until about 8 years ago I seemed to constantly struggle in the face of adversity! I was introduced to drugs and alcohol at the young age of six or seven years old. By the time I reached high school I was a full-blown cocaine addict and alcoholic. When I reach the age of 27 I had a $3-$500 a day heroin habit that nearly ended my life. Age 32 I was in an automobile accident where I damaged my spinal cord and was paralyzed, basically from the chest down. No matter what type of situation I have been faced with I have always seemed to come out OK, but this paralyzed thing was a tough one and I almost took my own life because I felt like I was imprisoned in my own body!
Every once in awhile I’ll hear somebody say "I wish I could go back and change my life", sure there are things that I regret, but I’m okay with my life it has definitely given me the best education and I wouldn’t be who I am today if I could change it.
When I woke up in the hospital after my accident I wasn’t in a complete state of shock like everyone would think. I was so drugged up that I really didn’t care, however the drugs did not last forever and believe me I tried to make that happen. After I had surgery a week later, where they fused my fifth and sixth vertebrae together I was ready to be shipped out to physical rehab. Fortunately the physical rehab I was going to was where my best friend worked as a rehab tech (having a friend at work there helped out a lot).
When I arrived at the rehab I was gung ho ready to bust my butt, which is what I did the first couple weeks. I started taking protein and creatine and was spending every free moment in the therapy room hitting the weights. In the beginning I was lucky to do a 5 pound bench press or a 2 pound shoulder shrug and so on, motivation was pretty hard to find. About three weeks into my stay I was informed by the psychiatry team I was going to have to go to a nursing. When I heard them say "nursing home" my heart sank and I cried. That is when I decided to give up, I decided no more therapy because I thought life was over. The only thing I did work hard at was trying to get my doctor to increase the dosage of my pain killers and trying to figure out how I was going to check out of this life.
After being kicked out of the physical rehab during my second time there (a month after the first stay) and being kicked out of a couple nursing homes, I ended up moving in and marrying a young lady that took care of me at the nursing home. I thought that was the answer to all my problems, which couldn’t have been farther from the answer. For the next three years I basically shut myself in my bedroom depressed being waited on hand and foot.
After three years the pain of not being able to take care of myself and basically just being a spectator in life began taking its toll on me I began seeing my life spiral down and at that point I decided I had to reclaim my independence, dreams, and happiness.
I started doing things for myself, just the little things and before I knew it I was transferring myself in and out of my wheelchair just after a couple weeks of weightlifting. At that point I started to get excited, I had met someone that introduced me to Murderball (quad rugby) which I fell in love with immediately. it was like something out of mad Max. I ended up playing a season and within a couple months I was healthy and even made some gains that I wasn’t even trying for. I started driving again and basically doing everything I did before just from a chair. Bodybuilding/fitness/weightlifting gave me back my independence I no longer dependent on my wife or anybody else to do my basic day-to-day tasks. With all these physical advances also came a healthy mental improvement as well. Once I understood what bodybuilding/fitness did for me physically and mentally I was hooked. Bodybuilding/fitness completely changed my life, not only did he give me back my physical independence it also gave me mental and emotional independence that was quite new to me.
Even with all the physical, mental, and even emotional benefits that bodybuilding/fitness gave me back it just wasn’t enough, I found myself constantly telling other people how bodybuilding/fitness changed my life and freed me from a prison I had created. I found that it was imperative for me to share all the things that helped me conquer this traumatic injury and everything that made me successful to people with similar altering injuries. I feel I would have made different choices if I would’ve had someone around to share what made them successful in overcoming their injuries. Someone to show just a glimmer of hope, someone that had overcome something as dramatic as paralysis.
I still struggle with finances, raising children, keeping a happy marriage and all the other day to day responsibilities that everyone has, but that’s the key. I am able to handle these situations, I’m involved with life not just watching it. The days where I wallow in self-pity are a thing in the past, I don’t like a lot of the situations that arise but I tackle them head on. Life goes on with or without me and today I am going on with life.
I owe everything to bodybuilding/fitness/sports my independence and happiness are a direct result of a disciplined diet and fitness program. In isolated than it is important for me to share my experiences with newly injured people in order to maintain the mental and emotional aspects of my life. I feel it is so important for people that are newly injured to have people that have overcome and conquer the things they see as impossible.
I’m in the process of trying to obtain a personal trainer certification so that I might become more involved and educated to be able to help people overcome adversity through health and fitness since it has done so much for me. I’m not sure where this will end up taking me but I am sure the journey will be exciting and very rewarding!
Push past your limits!
Michael C.
Well I am moving only about 30 minutes away from where I am now. I am moving to Columbia Missouri which is a little bit bigger than the hillbilly town I am currently living in!
I ended up taking an extra day off from my regular workout routine, which happened to be my shoulder and chest day. However I did manage to get quite an upper body workout thanks to my little dog Norbit. He is a little silky terrier/Chihuahua who is one year old and not been fixed yet. I tied him out to a tree while I was cleaning up the garage and the next thing I knew there was an empty collar. Now I knew exactly where he went, my neighbor has two pit bulls in an outdoor kennel in his backyard and Norbit likes to go over there and act like a little tough guy, he sits there and just yaps at the hundred pound dogs (which really are the sweetest pit bulls I’ve ever met). Now to get to his kennel I have to wheel my chair into my backyard which is a really thick grass (and I have court tires on my chair and my off-road chair is in the shop) lots of potholes and hills. His kennel is about 100 yards from my house, and I can get a really good upper body workout pushing my chair through the yard especially the shoulders.
Since my spinal injury I’ve been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what I will do for a career? My first thought was to go back to college, which I did for a while I just had no real direction on where I wanted to go with it. Then after I became physically active with fitness and sports I realized how important health and fitness were to my independence both mentally and physically I have decided to pursue a career in fitness.
Due to the location of my spinal injury (C-5/6) I have loss of function in my tricep’s, forearms and hands. I still maintain some function in these muscles just not very much. Fortunately when I rehabilitated myself I trained other muscles such as my shoulders and chest to compensate for the loss of function in those muscles, I also have learned how to make the damaged muscles fire by positioning my form differently when lifting.
I missed a couple of days posting here but I managed to get my workouts in and with some intensity!
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