The Seven Longest Yards

by Chris Norton

To realign my neck, the doctor had to add weight to a pulley system connected to the contraption on my head. The weights subtly pushed the bone over. The doctor added weight in five-pound increments until at forty-five pounds I heard what sounded like someone chomping into a celery stalk. My neck had snapped back into place. I sighed with relief. The worst pain I’d felt in my life was over.

  They removed the head stabilizer and replaced it with a neck brace. The edge of the brace reached the middle of my head. When they laid me on the MRI cot, I felt like I was resting on the edge of a piece of metal. While it wasn’t as painful as the traction, it was extremely uncomfortable. I sighed. This day just would not let up.

  I was miserable as the doctor explained that I’d have to lie completely still for an hour during the MRI—which was obviously easy for me at the time. A technician switched on the machine. There was a whirring sound as the cot under me began to move. The light above me slowly disappeared as I slid into the white plastic tunnel. The tiny tube was even smaller than it looked. The ceiling was almost on top of me. Once I was completely inside the machine, the whir stopped. Instead, my ears were blasted with what sounded like a jackhammer. This is going to be the longest hour of my life, I thought.

  Worry started rising inside me until I remembered the helicopter ride. Don’t focus on the negative, I reminded myself. Focus on the positive. Trapped in an MRI tube, I wasn’t sure what the positive might be, so I prayed instead. I’d been praying most of the day— “God, give me the strength to get through this.” That’s what my family did when life got tough. I grew up going to church most Sundays and praying before meals. I’d never doubted my belief in God. At the time, I didn’t realize there was a difference between believing in God and believing God. I just knew that I needed him at that moment more than ever.

  “God, can you give me a break, just this once?” I prayed. “Please, can I just fall asleep? All I want is to escape this for just a little bit. Please let me fall asleep.”

  Suddenly, my eyes snapped open as my cot slid out of the machine. Despite the jackhammering and the claustrophobia, I had fallen sound asleep. How? There was only one explanation: God had answered my prayers. All day I’d asked, God, what are you doing? Are you going to show up? Now he reminded me that he was with me the whole time.

  In that moment I felt God’s presence more clearly than ever before. “God, I know you’re there,” I prayed. “It’s going to be okay. I know you’re in this with me.”

  Immediately after my MRI, hospital employees wheeled me into surgery. My doctor stood over me and explained what was about to happen. “The whole procedure could take six hours,” he said. “Do you have any questions?”

  My voice caught in my throat. “Will I ever walk again?”

  I couldn’t make out his expression because the doctor bowed his head. “I don’t know, Chris.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I didn’t know how to stay positive with those words ringing in my ears. Then tears welled up in the eyes of the nurses. It was hard not to notice when the only thing not covered were their eyes. Before I could process what the doctor had said, someone placed a mask over my face. The heart monitor beeped away as I faded out of consciousness.

  What felt like one minute later, my eyes fluttered as nausea rose up my throat. The surgery was over. It had only lasted three hours—half of what they’d expected. I thought that had to be good news.

  Still groggy from the anesthesia, I forced my eyes open while I tried not to throw up. The room was blurry and spinning around me. I had a sense that my family was in the room with me, although I kept moving in and out of consciousness. When I became more aware, all I could think was, Why is this tube down my throat? I wanted to reach up and yank it out. When my arms didn’t cooperate, I pushed against the tube with my tongue. I heard a voice say, “Stop, Chris. You need that to breathe,” but I didn’t listen. I kept pushing the tube out of my mouth with my tongue until a nurse finally removed it. She replaced it with what looked like straws under my nose.

  I melted with relief when I finally came to enough to see my parents and sisters Alex and Katie next to me. “Mom. Dad,” I croaked. My throat was still sore from the breathing tube, and my lungs were weak from my injury.

  “The surgery went great, honey,” my mom said, kissing my forehead. She was using that funny voice she always has when she’s trying not to cry. “The surgeon will be in any moment to give us an update.”

  “You did great, buddy.” My dad patted my shoulder and cleared his throat. They stayed next to me in my dimly lit hospital room until the surgeon arrived.

  “The surgery went much faster than we expected,” he said. “We thought we’d have to operate on the front and back of your neck, but we only had to go in through the back. Basically, we took a piece of your hip bone and used it to replace a bone in your neck. You now have that bone and several screws fusing your C2, C3, and C4 vertebrae together.”

  The children’s song about dry bones ran through my mind as the surgeon talked to me. My mind had trouble comprehending what he was saying as he told me I’d suffered a grade IV dislocation and a fractured break of my C3 and C4 vertebrae. “Based on what we’ve seen, and on the fact that you have no feeling below the injury site, I estimate that you have a three percent chance of recovery,” the surgeon said.

  “What?” I asked. “You mean, I have a three percent chance of ever walking again?”

  The surgeon stared at the floor before he spoke. “No. A three percent chance of ever moving or feeling anything below the injury site.”

  I wanted to look around and see if he was talking to someone else. Even in my worst nightmares, I had never imagined myself trapped in a body that could not move. I was an eighteen-year-old athlete, a hard worker, the kid with a bright future. I was indestructible. This could not be my life. No, I planned to become an All-American football player, meet the girl of my dreams, graduate with a business degree and someday buy a lake house. Or even better, the girl of my dreams’ family would already own a lake house. So much for that, I thought.

  Yet even as that thought flashed in my head, a sudden urgency came over me. Maybe I was naive; maybe it was faith. I don’t know what it was, but something inside me said, No. Not me. I will not let this happen. I can’t let this happen. This isn’t going to be my life. I am going to beat the odds.

  I looked up at the surgeon and mustered all the strength inside me to move something, anything. Somehow, I contorted the muscles in my shoulder into a shrug. “No way,” I said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to be in that three percent. I won’t be that ninety-seven percent.”

  The surgeon was visibly surprised that my shoulder had moved ever so slightly. “You just beat the odds right there,” he said, pointing to my shoulders. “You aren’t supposed to be able to move anything below your neck. That’s huge, Chris.”

  That’s just a start, I thought. I’m going to get my life back. I’m going to walk again. Just you wait and see.

  4

  “You Will Beat This!”

  CHRIS

  One day in the winter of 2004, I slammed the front door as my dad and I came home from the worst basketball game of my life. I had missed every shot. I had turned the ball over. Each time the coach put me in the game, my team played worse. The fact that my dad was the coach made the situation even worse. I couldn’t do anything right. I was frustrated. My team was frustrated. And my dad definitely was too. The ride home was even worse.

  Once I was inside my house, tears rolled down my cheeks as I kicked off my shoes, stomped to the living room, and flopped on the couch. I switched on the TV and flipped mindlessly through the channels while in my mind I replayed my every missed shot and bad pass. It’s official. I’m a terrible basketball player, I thought. What made it even worse was that I knew I was much better than how I’d played. I think that’s what made me even more mad at myself. When my team needed me to rise to the occasion, I instead fell well short of my potential and cost us the g
ame.

  “Anything good on?” My dad said as he sat next to me.

  I just grunted in classic middle-school-boy style and kept flipping through the channels. I expected my dad to try to make me feel better like he always did. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned to me and said, “Chris, if you don’t like where you are, then do something about it.”

  I put down the remote and stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “I’m serious,” my dad continued. “You know what it takes to get better, and that’s practice. Don’t just sit here feeling sorry for yourself. Let’s get off the couch, grab your basketball, and I’ll rebound for you.”

  Ugh. I thought. That’s the last thing I want to do. I’d rather sit here and fume. I know he’s right, but the last thing I want to do is admit it! I opened my mouth to give him some lame excuse as to why I didn’t need to go outside and practice.

  Then something clicked.

  Wait a minute, I thought. Why am I sitting here feeling sorry for myself? I have the opportunity to get better, and I’m not taking advantage of it. That’s just ridiculous. I then felt embarrassed for feeling sorry for myself. “You’re right, Dad,” I said. I dropped the remote, put my shoes back on, went outside, and shot baskets until my mom called us in for dinner.

  My dad’s words have stuck with me. Anytime I become upset or discouraged, I refuse to let myself fall into a pity party. Instead, my dad’s words ring in my ears, “If you don’t like where you are, do something about it. Change it.”

  I never needed those words as much as I did as I lay in my hospital bed in Mayo Clinic’s Intensive Care Unit. Aside from my shoulders shrugging a little, nothing below my neck worked, and my doctor had just told me that this was how I was going to spend the rest of my life. I had every right to feel sorry for myself, but something inside me said, Do something. Change your situation. However, my determination still had to navigate reality, and right then reality according to the doctors meant up to three weeks in the ICU and an incredibly uncertain future beyond that.

  My physical therapy (PT) started almost immediately while I was still in ICU. From the start, I could tell that I had a long way to go. I went from being a college athlete to having my therapist work on sitting me up in bed without my blood pressure dropping too quickly. She then worked on strengthening my neck by having me nod my head. Lori Eaton, my physical therapist, was a bright spot in my day and had lots of energy. I was shocked that they limited me to thirty to sixty minutes of PT a day. When I complained, Lori suggested that I keep working after she left. Whatever she had me do that day, even if it was just nodding my head, I did it over and over for as long as I was physically able. I thought about the lesson I’d learned in the helicopter just a few days before. I didn’t dwell on the laundry list of things I couldn’t do. I focused on what I could do, even if that meant shrugging my shoulders or nodding my head over and over.

  Despite the hospital being three hours away from home, my family made sure I was never alone in the ICU. My sisters, Katie and Alex, always sat by my side holding my hands, and Mom and Dad sat in the few seats available. My grandma visited regularly as well. My parents brought me a DVD player so we could watch movies together. I learned in the first few days that there’s only so much daytime TV you can watch. Katie and Alex also played games in which they’d touch my feet under a blanket and have me guess which foot it was. My mind was always occupied, which helped me stay positive and optimistic . . . at least during the day.

  The dark moments came at night.

  Even though someone was usually sleeping in my room in case I needed help, I couldn’t sleep. Whenever the lights went out, I felt like a prisoner trapped in my bed. All the doubts, all the fears that I pushed away during the day with work and distractions came flooding back. Alone with my thoughts, my optimism evaporated. My mind raced through every worst-case scenario while dark questions haunted me: Will I be stuck like this forever? Will I have to quit school and live with my parents for the rest of my life? Will I always need nursing care? How can I be happy like this? How am I ever going to meet a girl? How can anyone love me like I am right now?

  The longer I lay there, the darker my fears became. I thought about how even if I got well enough to live on my own, my life would still suck. Everything I loved to do required a body that worked—playing sports, hiking, waterskiing, and tubing at the lake. How could I love a life in which everything I ever wanted to do was taken away?

  One night in the ICU, the dark thoughts threw me into a panic. I thought I was about to lose it when a doctor walked briskly through the door to check my vitals. That wasn’t unusual—someone stopped by every two hours to roll me on my side, adjust my pillows, and check for pressure sores. Normally they finished the job and left without saying too much. But tonight was different.

  After checking my vitals, the doctor stooped down on one knee next to my bed so she could look me in the eyes. “Chris, look at me,” she said. She didn’t use that half-whisper everyone else did in the middle of the night. Her voice was tough and authoritative.

  I looked at her, taking in her short reddish hair and glasses. She was probably in her sixties and spoke with a cowboy twang, as if she had walked straight out of a Western movie. I wondered what she could possibly want.

  We locked eyes. “My name is Georgia,” she said. “I’m from Wyoming. Do you know anyone from Wyoming?”

  I stuttered. “No.” Where in the world is this going? I thought. I just wanted to get back to feeling sorry for myself.

  Georgia kept going. “Well, people from Wyoming don’t tell lies. And I want you to know that you will beat this. You will beat this.”

  Instantly, the waterworks started. I sobbed uncontrollably as I stared at her in disbelief. I’d been lying there questioning whether all my effort and all my time was worth it. No one else on the medical team had given me much assurance. Georgia didn’t have to say a word to me that night, but the fact that she took an opportunity to encourage me when I was struggling completely changed my life.

  Georgia’s words gave me the courage to keep fighting for what I believed to be the ultimate reward: getting my old life back. In other words, I was thinking only about me and how I could beat this and how I could get on with my life. But the first hint that God might have something else in store for me came one day when my dad opened his laptop. “Chris, you’ve got to hear these messages coming in,” he said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What messages?”

  “We had so many people asking how you were doing that Alex helped us set up a CaringBridge site for you,” he explained. “We’ve been sharing the link, posting updates, and people can write messages in reply. They’re pouring in like you wouldn’t believe.”

  He held the laptop so I could read the replies. I expected to see a few from my college buddies or my aunts and uncles, but that wasn’t the case. Entry after entry began the same way: “Hi, Chris, you don’t know me, but . . .” Some shared their own stories of injuries and rehabilitation. Many encouraged me and quoted Scripture. But the ones that really grabbed me were the ones that read:

  “I am not really sure if you know how much God is using you to touch the lives of so many people. Your faith. Your determination. Your winning attitude.”

  “You all make me want to be a better person.”

  “Your bravery to keep on going to your full recovery keeps us inspired. Every encouraging note touches me deeply, I can’t help but cry.”

  “Chris, I don’t know you, but you seem like a strong young man with the will to fight. You are an inspiration to me to stay positive for the recovery of my daughter.”

  I finally looked up in tears. I’m just a kid who got injured, I thought. What have I done that could possibly inspire anyone? Tears began to flow.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  “Not sad,” I said. “Just touched, I guess.”

  Dad put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Son, you have an oppor
tunity here to make a big impact. You can show the whole world your character and what you’re made of. Everyone who reads your story will see what faith in God looks like.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “That’s a lot of pressure,” I finally replied.

  “I know it is,” Dad agreed. “But maybe your accident will be the beginning of a new plan for you. And if I know God, it’s going to be even better than anything you could have expected.”

  From the moment I couldn’t push myself up off the football field, all I’d thought about was getting my old life back. Up until I read the CaringBridge entries, it had never occurred to me that God could use my injury for his good. For whatever reason, all these people I didn’t even know were turning to God because of me. I didn’t understand it, but little by little, with every CaringBridge message, I started to see the pieces of the new story he was writing.

  “Maybe God has a different plan for me than I thought,” I said to Dad.

  He smiled at me. “I think you’re exactly right.”

  From then on my parents read me new CaringBridge messages every day. Believe me, I needed them.

  My recovery beat my doctors’ expectations. I moved from ICU to the rehab floor in five days, not three weeks. But even on the rehab floor, staying positive didn’t come easy. Five weeks into my recovery, I felt slight sensations throughout my body and even had some movement in my arms. All this time and effort and still nothing in my legs.

  By now I’d talked to several people who’d been through injuries similar to mine. Anyone who regained use of their legs had some kind of movement by no later than five or six weeks. Now, at my five-week mark, I heard a ticking clock in my head. If I was ever going to walk again, I had to move my legs now!

  Every night my prayer was the same. “God, please let me move something in my legs. I just need that first glimpse into walking. I need you. Please.”

  Then one morning, the week before Thanksgiving 2010, I woke up and realized I felt a sensation in my left big toe. It almost felt as if my toe were tingling or exposed, like a blanket had fallen off at night and you feel that brisk air on your toes. I still couldn’t move my toe, but when I told my family about the new feeling, everyone was excited. I thought the doctor would be too, but when I explained this sensation to him, he didn’t look up from the charts in his hands.