A year later, city accountant talks about surfing accident that left him unable to walk — and about

[Leo]

September 14, 2003 'This is my life'
# A year later, city accountant talks about surfing accident that left him unable to walk - and about coping

By Sandy Wells
STAFF WRITER

"I said, 'How bad is it? Will I be able to walk?' He said 'no' right off. I guess I needed to hear that, but it shocked me. I thought, he can't be right. I was just body surfing."

He'd just arrived at the beach, North Carolina's Outer Banks. In a few weeks, he would turn 54, but he felt like a kid again. Starting a vacation with his brother's family - 17 people sharing a big house on the beach - he felt happy, excited, free.

He couldn't wait to hit the roiling surf. Wind whipped his hair. He sniffed the salty air. Savoring the searing sunshine, the feel of hot sand under his feet, he walked through the dunes toward shore.
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Bill Chambers hasn't walked since.

One year ago, a body surfing injury paralyzed him from the waist down.

Interviewed last month in his office at Chambers, Paterno & Associates, the prominent Charleston accountant talked candidly about the August 2002 incident that instantly and irrevocably transformed his life.

He talked about the enormity of his loss, his care, the challenges he faced, the minuscule hope for a cure, all the physical and emotional repercussions that follow such a devastating diagnosis.

He told about crying privately, grieving for lost joys, grieving over the anguish his condition has caused his family. Tears flood his eyes when he mentions them.

Mostly, he talked about attitude, how concern for his family inspired a positive, proactive approach to his misfortune. A year later, that upbeat mindset tempers the downsides of his altered life in a wheelchair.

"I kept thinking about the toll this was going to take on all of us," he said, "and I decided that the best way to deal with it was to be as positive as I could. I can't walk. But we all don't have to be miserable about it.

"If I sulk about it, that's counterproductive. This is my life, and I'm going to cope with it as best I can."

He is, after all, still Bill.

Going over a waterfall

It was late afternoon, nearly time for dinner, but he wanted to catch one more wave. He waited for a good one. Then, he saw it. Steadying himself in the shifting sand, he watched it rolling toward him, curving perfectly, gaining momentum. Rising. Rising. Rising.

Now! A split second after the wave passed, he plunged into it. It lifted him, hurtling his body toward shore. Wow! He'd hit it just right. "I was stretched out horizontally with the top of my body out of the wave. I thought, 'Boy, this is going to be a nice ride.'"

But something horrible happened. "Instantly, I had this sensation of going over a waterfall. I went from horizontal to vertical quicker than a snap of the fingers."

His head hit the sand. No pain. Good. But wait. His legs wouldn't move. "I thought it had to be a stinger, temporary paralysis like a football player gets."

Floating face down under water, he couldn't catch his breath, couldn't lift his head. His mind raced. Would the numbness wear off in time? Surely it will. No, it's not wearing off. He couldn't hold his breath. He knew it then. He was going to drown.

"I never lost consciousness. I never hurt. I started flailing my arms." His brother and niece saw him go under. As they searched for him in the foaming surf, his arm brushed her leg. They reached for him, pulled him up, lugged him to shore. "By then, I started to be in real pain," he said. "I'd never been in such pain."

A helicopter took him to Norfolk General Hospital, a Level I trauma center. On the way to the operating room, the surgeon talked about the need for aggressive treatment, steroids, immediate surgery.

That's when he asked about walking. "He made it pretty clear I was going to be paralyzed. I remember thinking, 'I've got to do something. What can I do about this?'"

The operation lasted six hours. The surgeon inserted steel rods in his back to replace the damaged thoracic bone. "When I regained consciousness, I said to the surgeon again, 'Am I going to be able to walk?' He said, 'I already told you the answer to that question. It's no.' He wasn't unkind, but I guess he had an obligation to make my situation clear."

After four days in the Norfolk hospital, he was ready for transfer to a rehabilitation facility. He chose the Charleston Area Medical Center. "We found we had an internationally recognized expert in spinal cord injuries, Dr. Mario Balmaseda, right here in Charleston," he said. "And I wanted to be home with my family and friends."

Lying flat on his back in a body brace, in excruciating pain, he rode in an ambulance from Norfolk to Charleston. His most vivid memory of the trip reflects his unfailing sense of humor. "The ambulance attendant had had his tongue pierced and was worried that it had gotten infected. He was on the phone almost the whole time, talking to people about his tongue. I tried to sympathize with him. At one point, he leaned over and stuck out his tongue to show me. I thought, well, everybody's got their problems."

The doctor visited soon after he got settled in the hospital. "He must have talked to me for an hour. I thought maybe he'd just gotten off his shift and didn't have anything better to do. But he was that way the whole time.

"I expected some hot-shot doctor to come flying through, spend 30 seconds with me, throw a chart at some nurse and keep on going. But he would pull up a chair and never seemed to be in a hurry. That meant a lot to me.

Again, Chambers asked about walking. "He said the odds were a little less than 1 percent and that the window of opportunity for that would be from three months after the accident up to two years after the accident. He said if my feeling came back, it would come back very slowly."

He tried not to think about that. Instead, he focused on learning to use a wheelchair and gaining some independence. "But there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wonder, wait a minute, is that a sensation? Did I feel something? Then I realize, no, it was nothing. I'm resigned to the fact that the feeling isn't going to come back."

A proactive patient

He hadn't been hospitalized since his tonsillectomy as a 4-year-old, he said, so he had to learn to be a patient. "I had this image that everybody who walked in was going to be an expert on my case and know exactly what to do for me. It doesn't work that way.

"For example, the doctor put a note in my chart that I was only supposed to be in a wheelchair two hours a day. The first day, I was in it almost eight hours. Nobody told me to get out of the wheelchair or knew that I should. They mean well, but they're busy.

"I had a talk with Dr. Balmaseda. I told him to tell me everything they should know and that I would make sure they did it. I think nurses and orderlies appreciate that, because they can't know everything. Once I made the determination that I had to be in charge of my care, it went pretty well for me."

He learned how to deal with family members and friends. He would set the tone. They would follow his lead. "When people would come in to see me, they would have what I started referring to as 'The Look.' They were afraid of what they were going to see, of how bad it was. I sensed that they braced themselves before they opened the door, like, 'I don't care how horrible this is, I'm not going to let him know it's horrible.' So I tried to put people at ease right off the bat.

"Once we got over those first few minutes, people realized it was still me, just Bill, despite my limitations."

Alone, he let the tears flow. Even now, he gets misty-eyed at the thought of lost pleasures. "I've cried a lot. It's a grieving process. I have lost parts of my life. Probably the hardest things have been days off when there isn't something to do. That's when I start thinking about all the things I would have done. Played golf. Hiked in the woods. Worked in the garden.

"One of the hardest times I had in the hospital was Labor Day. I'd been there a couple of weeks. Labor Day weekend came, and it was a gorgeous weekend. I lay there and cried. I thought, I'm trapped in here. Everybody's out there, and I'm in here, and this is the way it's always going to be for me.

"Part of what broke that for me was the Sunday night of Regatta. I had a room facing the river. When it got time for the fireworks, the nurses pushed my bed over to the window. The fireworks looked like they were coming right at me. That was a real boost."

Rebuilding a life

Throwing himself into therapy, he spent four weeks in the hospital. Doctors had predicted six to eight weeks. "I injured my shoulder at first because I was pushing so hard. I remember them telling me that, normally, they have to push people forward, but they had to hold me back."

While he worked on getting out of the hospital, friends and clients worked on his house, putting in ramps, creating a downstairs bedroom, installing a handicapped-accessible bathroom, renovating the kitchen.

He learned to use a hand-controlled car and had a van converted to accommodate his paralysis. "The first time I drove myself to work was a great feeling."

He's thankful that he can afford a special van. "Some people don't have that option," he said.

Behind the wheel, he constantly thinks ahead to what obstacles he might encounter at his destination. Sometimes, he hesitates to go places if he thinks he might encounter problems.

Getting around in a wheelchair isn't easy, he said. "It's a little tougher out on the streets than people think. I was stunned at how tough it can be."

But people invariably ask what they can do to help, he said. "That was hard for me at first. I'm used to being independent. That's one of the things they teach you in therapy. You've got to let people help you."

His only hope of walking lies in federal legislation, he said. "The administration in Washington has restricted stem-cell research. I believe stem-cell research is the answer, not just to my problem, but so many others. If we took half the money we're spending in Iraq and spent it on research for this problem and opened up stem-cell research, I'd be walking in a couple of years. I really believe they're that close to it.

"I have a friend whose son had a similar accident snowboarding. The kid is 21. They need to be finding a cure for people like him. A kid like that ought not to be facing 50 years in a wheelchair. That bothers me as much as anything."

Counting his blessings

He doesn't torture himself with remorse. Knowing he didn't invite trouble comforts him, he said. "I didn't do anything stupid. It wasn't like jumping off a bridge. I surfed a wave no differently than I'd done thousands of times, so it was more like getting hit by a bolt of lightning. It just happened. Why me? Because I was there. Accidents happen to a lot of people."

Therapists told him to expect a bitter stage. It hasn't hit him. "I have too many things going for me."

His life, for starters.

"I could be dead. I so distinctly remember thinking, 'This is it. I'm going to drown in this ocean.' When I didn't, it was like I got lucky. Had it happened 15 minutes later, maybe nobody would have seen me and I would have drowned.

"When I got to ICU and saw people paralyzed from the neck down, I thought how much better off I was. You never have to look very far to see someone in worse shape."

He can still think, still work. Using a laptop computer, he started working in the hospital. Six weeks after the accident, he went back to the office. He puts in about 35 hours a week at his accounting firm and plans to work even longer as tax season picks up.

"The occupational therapist asked how I made a living. Well, all the parts that people pay for are still good. My brain and my mouth. So I have to recognize that it could have been a whole lot worse.

"I've been in meetings with clients, and once we are all around the table, I don't think the fact that I'm sitting in a wheelchair is in somebody's mind."

He appreciates the clients and co-workers who stood by him, he said. And repeatedly, he mentions the strength of his wife, Carolyn, and the importance of a caring family and close friends.

One evening in the hospital, he said, well-wishers filled the room. "Everybody was laughing and all these conversations were going on, and I thought, this is really nice. These are the things that really matter.

"I had my life pretty well carved out. I liked my work, the place I live, the community. I had lots of friends. It's reassuring that not that much of it has changed."

To contact staff writer Sandy Wells, use e-mail or call 348-5173
http://sundaygazettemail.com/section...tate/200309139

"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you."
Gandolf the Gray

[Chris Chappell]

Great article Leo. I relate very well to this guy in terms of the mental recovery process.

We need to get a guy like this involved in CC.