How Far Can You Go

by John Maclean

  “Based on the activity I have observed in your legs the past couple of days, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that,” Ken replied.

  I could hardly believe my ears. When I arrived at Ken’s house two days before, I had to use my crutches to support my weight and carry me up the steps to his non-wheelchair-friendly house. He walked right beside me. He could see how my legs did not work and yet he believed they could. I was beyond encouraged. It was as though I had arrived here at just the right moment and found just the right person to help me. “Really?” I said.

  “Yes. When the tremors began on all the machines, your legs responded in a bilaterally stable manner.” He showed me a few video clips. “Watch,” Ken said. “Notice how the right leg doesn’t lag behind but mirrors the movement of the left. That tells me information is getting through from the brain all the way down to the foot. John, your legs responded to the tremor like someone without a spinal cord injury.”

  Now he really had my attention. “Really? How is that possible?” I asked.

  “Your spinal cord injury is like a road block on a highway that keeps the neurons from moving up and down. Because you have pushed yourself physically with all you have done in sport over the past twenty-five years, the neurons have found a way to bypass the road block and get through,” Ken said.

  “And that is why I should be able to walk?”

  “Yes. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to,” Ken said.

  “Okay, let’s give it a go. What do I need to do?” I asked.

  “We’ll start working on your legs more tomorrow.”

  True to his word, Ken worked on my legs through the second day. And the third. And the fourth. He still used upper-body machines, but he focused more attention on leg exercises, each time watching my legs closely. Or I assume he did. My eyes were closed, after all.

  At the end of our session on the fourth day Ken said to me, “Let’s stand up . . . If you want to start to walk, you’ve got to put your right foot on the ground—that is, you’ve got to give it information of what you want it to do.”

  I had tried to take steps in the past, and when I did, I ran into two problems. First, I cannot move my right foot up and down. Medically this is known as foot drop. When I try to move my leg, the foot drags below and makes me fall right over. For that reason, whenever I hobble about with my crutches, I put all of my weight on my arms and keep balance and direction with my left leg while protecting my right by tucking it up off the ground behind my left. I protect it because of the second problem I face whenever I stand, much less take a step: pain. Standing for even a short time causes intense pain in my right foot. The pain does not go away when I sit down. Instead, it lingers and manifests into tiredness. I always know I will pay a steep price after standing for any time at all, or using my crutches too much. I might as well plan on not doing anything for the next day or so.

  All of this means that when Ken told me to give my right foot some information, I knew it would send information right back in the form of pain. But I’d spent the past four days letting go, so now it was time to let go of the foot and its pain. In spite of my reservations I said, “Okay,” and stood up from the weight machine bench.

  “Stand up straight,” Ken said.

  I did not realise I stood with a natural hunch that comes from wheeling oneself around for twenty-five years. “Oops. Sorry about that,” I said. I went back to what Rob had told me—to imagine that an invisible string was pulling me up through my head. I straightened up the best I could.

  “Now, John, you need to tell your right leg what to do and let your legs work together. Equal and even. Don’t listen to the negative thoughts telling you how you cannot do this. Just as you did on the machines, quiet your thoughts. Be totally present. Tell your legs what you want them to do.”

  I nodded. I took a deep breath and quieted my mind. Pain did not register as it normally did. That was a good sign, I told myself. I closed my eyes for a moment; then I told my right leg to go forward. Drawing deep inside myself for all the strength I could muster, I raised it ever so slightly and pushed it forward. The leg obeyed. I had taken a step. Before the shock of what had just happened could register, I told my left leg to move, and it did. I took a second step. Once more I told my right leg to take a step, and it did what I told it to do. Before I could tell my left leg to move I lost my balance. I grabbed hold of a nearby door frame, and Ken helped me back to my seat.

  I looked up at Ken, a little unsure of what had just happened. “Those were the first unaided steps I’ve taken in twenty-five years,” I said. “Wow.” I let out a long sigh. “That really just happened.”

  “It did,” Ken said, smiling.

  I left Ken and flew home to Sydney, then drove myself home to Penrith. “How did it go?” Amanda asked as I came in the door.

  “Very good. Actually, really good,” I said.

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  I’d almost forgotten about the shoulder. “It feels better than it has in a long time. But I have something to show you,” I said. I pulled out my phone and played the video of me taking my three steps.

  Amanda just sort of stared at the screen, unsure of what to make of it. “Oh my God. Was this today? You took three steps. How did that happen?”

  I told her the whole story.

  “So what does this mean?” Amanda asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t really know, but I am anxious to find out.”

  12

  Impossible

  * * *

  I took three steps in Ken’s gym, three steps that covered about one metre total. A little over a month later I walked. My paralysis was not cured. The lesion in my spine at the twelfth thoracic vertebra that put me in a wheelchair for twenty-five years did not suddenly disappear. But I walked.

  It started when Ken came down to Sydney for our next set of sessions together. He was as anxious to explore the frontiers of my walking as I was. As I’ve written many times, especially in the last few chapters, I believe nothing happens by coincidence. My meeting Ken is certainly no exception. Around the time I was hit by the truck, Ken started his work. He had no way to explain the phenomenon he observed in his clients until 1995. While I tackled Kona for the first time, Ken was reading a book on chaos theory by James Gleick. It turned his world upside down and gave him a framework from which to understand and explain his work. About the time I completed my third Hawaiian Ironman and started training to swim the Channel, Ken started trying to get the scientific community to listen to his theories on physics and neurobiology. It took twelve years before anyone would take him seriously. Four years later I wheeled into his facility, the perfect new test subject for his ideas on how neurons work in the body. For him, my timing was perfect.

  Ken also came into my life at what I believe was the perfect time. When I wheeled into Ken’s facility, it was the culmination of a journey I’d started twenty-five years earlier. For two years after my accident I tried to force myself to walk, to no avail. I finally realised that paraplegia is not something you beat. That’s when I had my talk with my dad when he said, “Look how far you’ve come just by surviving being hit by the truck. Now, how far can you go?” Answering his question pushed me to start paddling kayaks with my best mate, Johnno, which led to my first triathlon in the wheelchair, then to the Hawaiian Ironman, then the Channel swim and the Sydney games on up to taking silver in Beijing twenty years after my accident. Chasing down one goal after another squeezed everything I could out of my body, which, Ken later told me, was part of the reason why this new chapter in my life was even possible. That’s part of the equation.

  Not making London and the deep disappointment that followed was just as necessary. Trying to deal with that loss led me to deep meditation, which enabled me to focus my mind and turn off the internal dialogue in my sessions with Ken. Finally, there was the phone call telling me that paddling had been added to the Paralympics. The sport I loved, the first s
port I tried after my accident, was to be the sport where I fulfilled my lifetime dream of winning gold. That only seemed right. More than that, because I jumped into paddling, my shoulder started bothering me, which led me to listen to the advice of a friend who just “happened” to have experienced a new treatment.

  This entire journey led me to an afternoon in a gym near my home with Ken and his assisting psychologist, Katrina. Amanda stayed home with Jack. When I left the house, I had no idea this day at the gym would be any different from what I had done every day since I returned from Emerald a month earlier. I had been following the program Ken gave me when I left Emerald, but I hadn’t been pushing myself into trying to walk any more than a step or two. I expected better results again this time, since Ken was going to be right next to me, coaching me, but only in terms of tremors and pain relief. I hoped to replicate the three steps from a month earlier, and perhaps on this day I could add another step or two.

  The gym where we went was one I had joined right after I returned from working with Ken in Emerald. It had similar equipment to what he used, similar but not quite the same. Since Ken knows the manufacturer of most of the weight machines he uses, he has them customise them to his exact specifications. I had to settle for what I could get in Penrith. Ken had given me a very detailed program to follow on my own, and I did my best to do just that. However, I found working his program alone in a gym filled with strangers to be very different from going through the process in his facility. I set each machine on the lightest possible setting; then I closed my eyes and manipulated the machine very, very slowly rather than pushing through a rapid series of reps. If you are not familiar with the culture inside a gym, suffice it to say this is not normal behaviour. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel all the eyes staring at me. People had to wonder what on earth I was doing. The internal dialogue Ken told me to silence kicked into high gear. I sort of wondered what I was doing myself. What are people going to think if you go into tremor? I asked myself. They’ll think you’re having a seizure and that you’ve lost your mind. Soon I became intensely aware of everything around me. Why is the music so loud? Who wears that much cologne to come to a gym? Why can’t I focus? Needless to say, my first attempts to replicate my sessions with Ken alone at the gym did not go too well.

  Nor did I take any more steps on my own. I found I could stand without pain, but I was reluctant to take more than one or two steps. I found it rather frustrating that my fear of the pain returning and not being able to balance were slowing me down. The frustration was only heightened by the internal dialogue I needed to quiet. Instead of being present with a clear mind, my mind screamed, Why can’t you do this? while another part of me yelled back, Easy does it or the pain will come back! The duelling dialogues in my head only made it that much more difficult to do what I wanted to do.

  Having Ken next to me in the gym, coaching me as I sat down on the leg-curl machine, helped shut off the internal dialogue. He set the weight to its lightest setting and said, “All right, John. You know what to do. Eyes closed. Focus on being present. As you press down with your legs have each leg do its part, equal and even.”

  I did as I was coached. The other people in the gym who had so distracted me before just disappeared from my consciousness. The tremor came rather quickly. It soon spread throughout my body—a “global” tremor is what Ken calls them.

  After a couple of hours moving about from machine to machine, Ken said to me, “Let’s have you stand up now.”

  I got excited. The last time Ken had me stand at the end of a session I took my first three steps. “Okay,” I said.

  “Now, John, I want you to close your eyes and shut off the visual cortex completely. I need you to turn off all the streams of thoughts running through your head and just be present with me, right here, standing.”

  “I can do that,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to focus completely on the sensation of standing, just standing. I steadied my breathing.

  “That’s good,” Ken said. “You want to be even, not too high with excitement or too low.” He paused for a few moments as I gathered myself. “John, I want you to walk straight ahead. I am right beside you and Katrina is on the other side. With your eyes closed, just start to put one foot in front of the other.”

  I took a deep breath. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried walking about with your eyes closed, but it raises the anxiety level for anyone, especially someone who has only taken a few unaided steps in twenty-five years. Fear tried to take over my thinking, but I pushed it back. I focused solely on lifting my right leg and moving it forward. Doing so required my full concentration. I have absolutely zero muscle control of my right leg below the knee and very little from the hip to the knee. On top of that, I lack abduction at my hips, especially on my right side. The leg just sort of flips out and about whenever I try to move it, and I had never been able to do anything about it. But now, standing with my eyes closed in the middle of my local gym, Top 40 music blaring from above, random people moving about, the sound of weights banging in the background, I told my leg to move and it obeyed. I stepped forward with a longer stride than I had taken in Emerald a month before.

  One step led to the next. And the next. Eyes still closed. Concentrating only on taking the next step, I could hear the noise around me but I ignored it. I wobbled a bit, not quite a stumble, but I regained control by moving my arms out like a tightrope walker. With each step I took, the next came that much easier. None were easy. I can honestly say that taking these steps was the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in my life.

  Ken spoke very little as I took one step after another. He just quietly let me know I was doing all right and that the path was clear in front of me. I kept stepping, walking, placing one foot in front of the other, eyes closed, my thoughts quiet. Finally Ken said, “Go ahead and stop and open your eyes.”

  I opened my eyes and turned towards Ken. I could not believe what I saw. I had walked at least ten metres. Ten! As you can imagine, I broke out in a smile. If I could dance, I probably would have then. But before I could get too caught up in the moment, Ken said, “Now, with your eyes open, walk back to where you started.”

  My earlier fear was replaced with excitement, but I pushed it back as well. Not too high and not too low. Stay even, I told myself. Thirty steps later I was back where I started. Was it easier walking back? That’s difficult to say. It was obviously easier to see where I was going with my eyes open. However, without those steps with my eyes closed, I never could have walked back. I had to first shut out everything that told me I could not walk before I could truly believe that I could.

  Ken and Katrina walked along beside me as I made my way back to the weight machine where I had started. A friend, Paul, who did some professional filming, followed behind, recording the moment with his camera. I did not stumble or wobble as though I might lose my balance. Instead I just walked, a little lopsided and slower than most people, but I wasn’t too concerned about speed.

  When I reached the machine where I had started, I turned and looked at Ken, who was beaming. If I could have jumped for joy, I would have. I reached over and grabbed Ken’s shoulder. The camera records the smile on my face. It wasn’t a big grin. Internally I was a bit overwhelmed and choked up, but I didn’t want to break down right there, right then. I needed to process this quietly, privately. It was a lot to absorb. I held it all in, and I looked at Ken with a face that said, “I did it. Now, what’s next? How far can we go with this?”

  How far did not include my suddenly walking everywhere I went. After my walk from one end of the gym to the other, I got back into my wheelchair and wheeled out to my car. Mine was not, nor is it now, a Hollywood story where I suddenly get up from my wheelchair and walk and run as though I had never been hit by a truck. Perhaps that day will come. However, getting back in my chair did not diminish what had just happened. I walked ten metres, then turned around and walked back. Paraplegics do not walk, even incomplete ones. But I just
had.

  Later that night I joined Ken at a birthday party for a close friend of his he wanted to introduce me to. As we got ready to leave I said to Amanda, “I’m not taking my crutches.”

  “What? Really?” she replied. “How are you going to put your chair in the car? What if the bathroom isn’t accessible?”

  “I have my walking poles. I’ll be fine.”

  “Of course you will be!” Amanda said. “What are you going to do next? Dance?”

  We smiled at each other. I looked forward to exploring the answer to her question.

  When we arrived at the party, I wheeled into the house, but I spent most of the night standing and talking with people. Being able to look people in the eye rather than looking up at them from my chair was refreshingly pain-free. Standing and socialising for a couple of hours was almost as big an accomplishment as my walk earlier in the day. Those who have never lived in a wheelchair cannot understand how it feels to have people literally look down at you as you interact with them.

  The next morning I woke up feeling strong. Ken, Katrina and I headed to the gym straightaway. One of Ken’s favourite sayings is “Explore and exploit”. Today he planned on taking that to a new level. He put me on a leg-press machine, which he had done before. However, on this day, he had me do the presses one leg at a time, both right and left.

  A good friend joined us in the gym that day. Dr John Yeo, my spinal surgeon, came along to see what was happening to me. I asked him to be there. I called him not long after I returned from my first sessions with Ken. Dr Yeo has been a good friend and mentor to me in the years since my accident. He was one of the doctors who patched me up and got me on my way. He also gave me my first meaningful job after my accident with Spine-Safe. Without him, there never would have been an Ironman finish or a Channel swim or any of the other things I accomplished over the previous twenty-five years. That’s why I wanted him there with me on this day. I wanted him to share the moment, but I also hoped he might be able to help me understand what was taking place.