Preface
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In 1968, I broke my back. The helicopter I was
filming from unaccountably flew into a mountain.

I was a model patient. I was cooperative, cheerful
and spoke confidently of the future. I left the hospital
two months to the day after I had arrived, and everybody thought I was
about the flashiest gimp in the 
history of the University of Colorado Medical Center.
On the day I left, I got into my new hand-controlled
Plymouth, picked up some groceries, went to a liquor
store, met my parents at the airport (they’d flown in
to celebrate my discharge, of course, not to help)
and we all went to my new apartment to toast a new
life. By then I was a little too tired to rejoice, but it
was good. And I was glad for the help.

At three o’clock in the morning, my parents
wheeled me back to the emergency room because my
overworked stomach muscles had gone into spasm.
Ignominious. Two months in, eight hours out. A shot
of Demerol got me back to the apartment in time for
breakfast.

I returned to work that week. This was a clear sign
to the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation,
Workers Compensation, the hospital staff and to me
that I was fully rehabilitated. Remarkable. Instant
recovery. A sixty-day wonder. Everybody loves a
winner.

People still admire the way I have responded to my
injury. They’re sure I have all the answers. I now want
to dispel that notion. While I cannot act on stage, tell a
joke, mimic an accent or lie with conviction, I have
fooled myself and others throughout these 12 years of
paralysis. Fact is, I never did know what was going on,
never did have the answers. Yes, the years have been
OK. A few have been spectacularly good. One was
spectacularly bad. Yes, there are easier ways to live.
Yes, there has been compromise, but there have been
great loves, great events, great moments. Yes, there
has been great happiness and great unhappiness. But
what characterizes those years is not happiness or
unhappiness, but *change*. Really, the only thing I know
for sure about those years is that *they sure were
different*.

The point to get straight is that I’m not a joyful
bundle of psychological acceptance, my middle name is
not Everhappy, and I still don’t have the answers.

That’s why I got 54 other people to write this book
for me. No one of them has the answers either, but
collectively, they know a great deal. They know a lot of
what you need to know, and I feel honored to be a
conduit.

The hospital where I spent two months was not a
specialized spinal cord injury unit, yet I received
excellent care. The only thing lacking was exposure to
other cord injuries, other people who shared my
predicament and had experience in dealing with it. This
didn’t seem to be a problem at the time, and I was
probably relieved not to have to confront other
wheelers. It took me 10 years to realize that not only
had I missed something important, but that I was still
missing it. Some part of me was still broken, and was
being steadfastly ignored. So in meeting and talking to
the people in this book, I was searching for what I
might have found a decade earlier had I allowed myself
the company of experienced cord injuries. It became a
journey of personal discovery, a game of identity hide-and-seek.

Once embarked upon this Giant Plagiarism, this
picking of other brains, I found myself recognizing the
experiences of others. The same things had happened
to me, but had been stored somewhere below the
surface of my normal recall. Bringing this body of
experience into the light, into an area of availability and
utility, has been enriching beyond all measure for me. I
want you to share this experience so that you will not
have to muck about in the wilderness for years, as I
did, to acquire it by yourself. The wheel does not need
to be re-invented, and why not take a free ride when
offered?