Still Me

by Christopher Reeve

  My friend Robbie Robertson, an exceptional pilot, won the national championship in soaring. Right after he came home he went gliding at a different airport than usual. It was a very gusty day, and he forgot to tell the tow pilot that he needed to be towed at eighty miles an hour because he was carrying a full load of water ballast in his wings. So he was towed at sixty-five, the normal speed for low-performance canvas gliders, and they ran out of runway. As the tow plane released and climbed away, Robbie tried to pull up. He went up about one hundred feet and stalled. The glider went straight into the ground. He was killed instantly.

  So I come back to my own situation, approaching that third jump on May 27. I may have moved forward before I should have, which is an easy mistake to make. On the other hand, that shouldn’t have been enough to cause Buck to stop. But I’ve learned that to speculate endlessly about what happened serves no purpose other than to torment myself. Regardless of exactly what happened, I know now that I can’t relive the event forever. If I made a mistake, I’ve got to forgive myself for being human. I’m in the process of doing that now.

  I only fell a few feet, but I shattered my first cervical vertebra as I landed on the top rail of the jump. The second vertebra was also broken, but not so badly. Then I was fighting for air like a drowning person. It’s possible that as I twisted my head and fought for air the shards of my first vertebra and the broken part of the second vertebra were cutting and damaging nerves in the spinal cord. I was probably my own worst enemy at that point.

  By the time the paramedics arrived at the scene, I hadn’t breathed for three minutes. They stabilized my head and managed to keep me alive by squeezing air into my body with an ambu bag. Apparently I was still conscious; later they described me as “combative.” I’m very lucky they reached me so quickly, because after four minutes of not breathing, brain damage begins. They managed to hold my head still enough to put on a collar that immobilized my neck. After I was loaded into the ambulance, they drove off the field extremely slowly, so that the rough terrain wouldn’t cause further damage.

  Several months later I called these paramedics and told them how grateful I was that they had saved my life. They were very matter of fact, saying that it was just part of their job. I was deeply moved by their quiet, understated response. In keeping with EMT policy, they never even told me their names.

  Dana was always there when I competed, usually stationed at the more difficult jumps. Often she would videotape as much of the ride as possible, and I would spend countless evenings running the film backwards and forwards, looking for ways to improve. But this time she was still back at the Holiday Inn, where Will was having a difficult time waking up from his nap. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Peter Lazar, one of our group, and the first thing he said was, “Now, don’t panic.” Dana asked, “What happened?” She’s a doctor’s daughter; in emergencies she is pretty steady. She immediately assumed that I had fallen. There would be no other reason for Peter to call and say, “Don’t panic.” When he said, “Chris had a spill,” it occurred to Dana that this is the kind of language people use to minimize situations. (Dana’s sister once crashed into a tree in a skiing accident, broke her nose, and lacerated her face: her other sister called up and said she’d had a “skiing mishap.”) Then Peter added, “I don’t know why, but they had to take him off the field on a stretcher.”

  Dana took Will, who of course did not know what was happening, drove to the Culpeper hospital, and found the emergency room. A nurse came in. Dana said, “Hi, I’m Dana Reeve. My husband is here.” And the nurse said, “Oh, okay.” Dana asked, “Is my husband all right? Is he okay?” The nurse would only say, “The doctor will be out in a minute.”

  Dana was beginning to sense that something terrible had happened. She was still very conscious of Will, who went on talking and wanting to play. There was only one other person in the waiting room. It was all quiet and sleepy; the Culpeper facility is a really small place. Then the nurse came back and said, “The doctor will be right out.” There were the three of them sitting in silence—Dana, Will, and a woman reading a magazine.

  Then she saw a helicopter landing in the courtyard, with the name Pegasus painted on the side. She thought: That’s not for a broken arm.

  Two nurses came out and told Dana the doctor wanted to see her in his office. One took one elbow and one took the other, and they walked down the hallway. Dana was carrying Will and thinking: They’re holding me up. This is really serious, this is something awful.

  Dr. Maloney, the admitting physician at the ER, came into the office and said he was very worried about me. But he didn’t tell her I had broken my neck. Will was sitting in Dana’s lap, and as Dr. Maloney was giving her the details of my injury, she felt like she was being knocked backwards with each new thing he said: I’d broken the top two cervical vertebrae (C1 and C2), I was having trouble breathing, I was on a respirator. After each new piece of information, Dana took a breath and said, “Okay, okay, okay.” She felt as if she were being punched repeatedly and had to prepare herself each time for the next blow.

  Will was sitting there squeezing Dana’s nose with his fingers so that she would say “beep.” It was one of his favorite games. He did that as Dana was hearing about my injury. She listened, and she kept saying “beep”—trying to remain the parent in control while receiving the most devastating news of her life.

  She was very confused. If I was on a respirator, that meant I was practically dead but they were just keeping me breathing. She knew nothing about broken necks. She didn’t understand how it all fit together. She said, “I have to call my father.” She needed a translation.

  Amazingly, Chuck Morosini was at home that holiday weekend. Dana told him, “Chris has had a serious riding accident. It’s a neck injury.” Her father said, “Oh God.” That was enough. She knew immediately that my life was hanging in the balance. The people at Culpeper said that Dana should see me before the helicopter took off, because it might be for the last time.

  Dana had to collect Will, try not to frighten him with what was happening, and check out of the motel. How she got through that afternoon, I have no idea.

  She also had to cope with the public. She knew the media would be all over the story, but she didn’t want to deal with anybody outside the family. She knew she had to protect Will and to protect me. Her reaction was, “Everybody out, this is a crisis.” The only way to deal with it was to form a tight circle.

  As Dana packed up my belongings, she was acutely conscious that I might never need them again. She collected my shaving things, my socks, and the rest of my clothes. She came across my map of the cross-country course, which I had been studying just a couple of hours before. But she remained composed, putting everything in the suitcase, looking under the bed, in the drawers, finding keys, going through all the ordinary motions of checking out of a motel.

  Will wanted to play soccer. He was clearly searching for some normality now that everything had gone haywire. Dana actually went out and kicked the ball with him a couple of times, then came back in and continued packing. “Mommy has to finish packing. We have to go. They’re taking Daddy in the helicopter. We have to go.”

  Then they went to the front desk to check out. Earlier that day someone had come by and said, “The manager would like to have dinner with you and your husband tonight, and we have babysitters.” As she turned in our keys, Dana said, “Could you please tell the manager that we won’t be able to have dinner tonight, and thank him very much?” The woman asked, “Where’s your husband?” And Dana said, “He had to leave.” “Oh,” said the woman, “I really wanted a picture. Can I have a picture of you?” So Dana posed. She sat there with Will and posed for a picture because she just didn’t want to explain.

  Then she and Will drove to the University of Virginia, as I was being flown there in a helicopter named for a flying horse.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  * * *

  When Dana arrived at UVA, she still
had no idea what to expect. In the ER, Dr. Nadkarni, who told her to call him Mo, came in, sat down, and said, “I have some bad news.” She’d already had so much bad news. She didn’t know whether the next thing would be: “Your husband didn’t survive the helicopter trip” or “He’s brain damaged beyond repair.”

  He repeated much of what she had heard at Culpeper: I couldn’t breathe on my own, I was intubated and on a respirator. But he was the first one who said, “There’s a chance he may never breathe on his own.” Dana said it was like being slammed into a wall. Her whole body and head involuntarily turned to one side, as if she had been struck.

  Will was picking all of this up. For a good two weeks afterwards, he would ask Dana repeatedly, “Why did Mo have bad news?” And she would have to tell him over and over that I had fallen off Buck, my neck was badly injured, and that this meant I couldn’t move my body. Hearing this over and over again was part of his attempt to process what had happened. During my first week in the hospital, Will repeatedly reenacted the accident for himself on a hobbyhorse in the playroom of the pediatric wing. Again and again he would deliberately fall off the horse in slow motion, saying, “Oh, my neck, my neck.” Dana would reassure him that he was fine but that, yes, my neck was injured and I wasn’t able to move.

  Like everyone else Mo was wonderful with Will. Later he took him to a playroom so that Dana could spend a little time with me before I went in for an MRI. He became friends with Will, and Mo was the first person outside our family that he was willing to stay with.

  Dana got Will something to eat, then went back to the emergency room. It was about five-thirty, still light out. Will was very hungry, and Dana was trying to keep him happy while keeping herself from falling apart.

  A doctor brought her in to me. I was lying on a gurney, intubated and still unconscious. She met with the chief of neurosurgery, Dr. John Jane, and Dr. Scott Henson, his second in command. They told her I was extremely lucky to have survived the accident, that my head was intact, and that my brain stem, so close to the site of the injury, appeared unharmed. If there is damage to the brain stem, your face doesn’t work; you can’t move your mouth, can’t move any of your facial muscles.

  I was on morphine and Versed, completely snowed. And whenever I did become conscious for brief moments, all they could do was wash my mouth out with flavored swabs—little pieces of foam on a stick that come in cherry, raspberry, and orange. I wasn’t allowed to drink or eat anything during the days before the operation. I would become semiconscious for a short time, not aware of anything much, then drift back under again. All the while Dana was sitting beside me. I felt absolutely nothing. I had no idea of my situation. Even in the brief moments when I was awake, I was still unaware.

  After a few days of heavy sedation, I developed what is called ICU psychosis. When sleep patterns are disrupted for long enough, you can become disoriented and slightly psychotic. This is temporary and disappears when the patterns are restored. It has something to do with dark and light, with sleeping in the dark but sensing that you’re in the light.

  Apparently I would wake up suddenly, still in a sort of dream, imagining wild situations. I would look at Dana and start talking—mouthing, actually, because I couldn’t speak—as if we were accomplices, members of a gang. I’d tell her, “Get the gun.” Dana would ask, “Get the gun?” and I’d say, “Yeah, get the gun out of the bag.” I kept saying, “There’s foul play.” “There’s foul play, they’re after us.” Dana would ask, “Who?” and I’d reply, “The bad guys.” It was like a kids’ game with cops-and-robbers talk. But I was clearly feeling persecuted and believing that people were out to get me. For Dana this was chilling. She left my room and told the doctors, “He’s really talking strangely.” They reassured her that there was no head injury. A CAT scan had shown that my brain was fine, and when I came off the drugs the hallucinations would disappear, which they did.

  I was extremely lucky to have come under the care of Dr. Jane, a brilliant neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery. In addition to being chief of neurosurgery at UVA Hospital, he is chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Virginia Medical School, where he has trained many of the world’s leading neurosurgeons and preeminent professors of neurosurgery. His curriculum vitae is roughly the size of a county telephone directory, listing accomplishments that seem too numerous for a single lifetime. In 1993 he was elected president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons and editor of the Journal of Neurosurgery; in addition he served a term as director of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons. He has lectured and taught all over the world, from the United States to Taiwan, from Stockholm and Prague to Korea. He has received dozens of awards and grants to investigate cranial injuries and nerve regeneration. The coauthor of several books on the central nervous system, he has also contributed chapters in close to seventy others and published more than 260 articles in prestigious journals. It was just my great good fortune that he was at the hospital when I arrived, that he took control of my care and agreed to operate on me himself.

  Just after I regained consciousness. Dana and I dealt with ICU psychosis and prepared for surgery.

  At the small county hospital in Culpeper, little could be done for me. But fortunately the doctors there had methylprednisolone (MP) on hand and administered it to me immediately. Methylprednisolone is a synthetic steroid, which must be given within eight hours of the injury to have any effect. Doctors discovered in the 1980s that it can help fight the inflammation that occurs immediately after a lesion in the spinal cord. Not only does the victim suffer the damage caused by the initial trauma, but soon afterwards the entire central nervous system starts to fall apart, going down rapidly like a row of dominoes. The inflammation, which in my case extended down to the seventh cervical vertebra, causes the breakdown of fats into unstable compounds called free radicals that are like acid to cell tissues. In other words, healthy nerves below the site of the injury are being eaten alive, causing further loss of sensation and motor function. But in most patients MP can reduce this inflammation by about 20 percent. This 20 percent can mean the difference between patients breathing on their own and spending life hooked up to a ventilator.

  This is why being given the MP was so critical. Afterwards the staff at Culpeper could only wait for the medevac helicopter to airlift me to Charlottesville and the intensive care unit at UVA.

  As soon as I arrived there, Dr. Jane had me stabilized to prevent any more compression in the spine (a result of having landed straight on my head). Compression causes electrical impulses attempting to travel through the injured area to go haywire, which leads to the death of even more nerve cells. As these cells die another wave of destruction radiates out from the damaged site. Immune cells flood in and, in a frenzied attempt to clear away the accumulated debris, begin to chew up damaged and healthy nerves alike.

  So as the victim of a spinal cord injury at the C2 level lies immobilized and unconscious, inflammation is steadily destroying the essential functions of the body: breathing, bladder and bowel control, sexual response, and any motion below the neck. Only the heart and the brain continue to function normally.

  Dr. Jane had me placed on a bed and implanted a metal structure into my head just above the temples. Then he attached a heavy weight behind it to keep me immobile. I was hooked up to machines that monitored my heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation levels (SATs). I continued to drift in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I would attempt to flail and jerk my head from side to side, and they would have to sedate me even more.

  My lungs had begun to fill with fluid, making me highly susceptible to pneumonia. In the past doctors had no way of removing liquid from the lungs, and at this stage a patient usually died. I had pneumonia in one lung, but they managed to clear the infection with powerful antibiotics and by repeated suctioning—an extremely unpleasant experience. They stick a tube into your lungs and suck out the liquid. The tube going down your throat can b
e very painful, and you’re off the ventilator for at least four or five breaths, which can seem like an eternity. I dreaded suctioning more than any other “care” the entire time I was in the ICU.

  After five days I became fully conscious and able to make sense. Henson and Jane came in to explain my situation. They told me in detail about the extent of my injury, and that after the pneumonia cleared from my lungs they would have to operate to reconnect my skull to the top of my spine. They didn’t know if the operation would be successful, or even if I could survive it. They had a plan, but it was extremely risky and they needed my consent. Dana had insisted (over the objections of some of the family) that the doctors discuss everything with me personally and that nothing be done without my consent.

  I answered somewhat vaguely, “Okay, whatever you have to do.” Ever since childhood I’d been used to solving my problems. Whatever scrape I would get myself into, I was always sure of a way out. I’d think: I’ll get out of this, I’ll be okay, everything’s fine. I’d survived a lot of difficult situations before, both physically and emotionally.

  Once I fell out of a parasail on Martha’s Vineyard because my friend who owned the boat and all the equipment probably didn’t realize, and certainly didn’t tell me, that the harness was certified to carry only up to 180 pounds. As the boat pulled away from the beach and I gained altitude, all four straps slipped through the buckles. I fell about ninety feet into four feet of water. Luckily I had the presence of mind to curl up into a ball and go in sideways, so I wasn’t seriously injured. I coughed up a little blood, and the next day one side of my body was black and blue, but I was fine. I’ve broken an ankle skiing, bruised my ribs playing hockey, and contracted malaria while scouting locations for a film in Kenya. During the shooting of Street Smart I had an emergency appendectomy, but I was back on the set the next day. I always recovered quickly from these physical setbacks, and over time I coped successfully with the emotional challenges in my life, such as my parents’ divorce, as well.