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 game.
“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 opportunity 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.
“I’m serious, doctor,” I said. “If you’d just take off my shoe and look at my toe, maybe . . .”
The doctor sighed. “Chris, you’re experiencing what we call a phantom feeling,” he said. “You want to believe you can feel something in your left big toe. You tricked yourself into thinking it’s real, but it’s not. I’m sorry.”
I frowned, trying to keep my jaw from dropping. “I’m telling you, I haven’t felt anything like this until today. I know something is different,” I insisted.
“This happens all the time with people who have spinal cord injuries,” the doctor said. “But at the end of the day, the fact is, you’re not going to be able to move anything in your legs ever again.” And with those lovely parting words, he nonchalantly walked out of the room.
To say I was crushed would be putting it mildly. He had cast aside everything I had been working toward and praying for as if it were all for nothing. I’d never worked harder for anything in my life, and this doctor had just shut the door on my hope of moving anything soon. My dad, who was with me during that pleasant exchange, grabbed my hand. Tears welled in his eyes as his voice broke, “Chris, do not let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do.”
That was the first time I ever saw my dad cry. I teared up too as I promised him, “I never will.”
I now had a new goal: prove that doctor wrong. Over the next week, I worked up to three hours of therapy a day. That still wasn’t enough for me. I asked for a fourth hour, which, I was told, no one had ever asked for before. Eventually they gave it to me, but they drew the line at a fifth hour. Undeterred, I asked my physical and occupational therapists to write up workouts I could do on my own, outside of my scheduled therapy time.
After a week of nonstop work, I woke up on Thanksgiving morning and felt a new, even stronger sensation in my left big toe. My physical therapist, Megan Gill, had barely walked into my room for our therapy when I blurted out, “My big toe! I think I can move it!”
She pulled back the covers, and there it was: my big toe twitching on command. Seeing that toe jerk to life felt better than every Christmas morning and football win I’d ever experienced in my life, put together. I yelled for Katie and Alex to come see.
“Look at this!” I yelled. My sisters screamed when they saw me wiggle my toe.
“Chris!” Alex burst into tears. “It happened! You did it!”
“We have to get Mom and Dad back here,” Katie said. They had stayed in a hotel the night before and hadn’t come to the hospital yet. They were in for quite a surprise.
When my parents arrived, I told Dad I needed help. “Can you give my feet a pep talk?” I asked. Every once in a while, my dad would stoop down by my feet and scream in a sarcastic motivational voice as if he could inspire them enough to move. “I feel like they need it today.”
My dad laughed, pulled back the covers, and took his usual position at the foot of the bed. “Move!” he screamed in that voice. When my toe wiggled, Dad’s eyes popped wide open as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Did you just do that?” my mom cried. She broke down in tears when she saw me do it again as if it were nothing. Finally she took a break from sobbing to smack me playfully. “You knew you could do this and never told us?”
I’d never been so thankful for a moving toe in my life. I was downright giddy. “Someone bring that doctor, Dr. Phantom, in here, and you tell him to phantom this,” I asked everyone who came into my room that day. It’s probably for the best that he was gone that day.
The movement in my toe aside, over the next few months, it became increasingly obvious that walking out of the hospital unassisted—my definition of “beating this”—wasn’t going to happen in the time frame I had set for myself. Throughout those months, I clung to God as if my life depended on it. Rather than dwell on the fact that I was not going to walk unassisted any time soon, I chose to forget about what I couldn’t do and instead focused on what I could do and the progress I was making. By God’s grace I grew to believe that my injury would not define or limit me. I was a realist, which meant I accepted where I was but held out hope that I could go much, much further.
But I didn’t feel completely comfortable with my new identity until March 20, 2011. It was my nineteenth birthday, and I was home for a weekend visit—we started going home once a week that month. About ten of my friends planned to take me to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch college basketball. We were running late, and when my friend transferred me to the front seat of his car, he accidentally hit the lock button on the car door. Before we realized what had happened, he slammed the door shut. I looked and saw his keys sitting on the seat next to me.
He turned to my buddies in disbelief. “Oh my gosh. I just locked Chris in the car.” My friends called to me, “Chris, just hit the unlock button. It’s right next to you.” But I couldn’t do it. By this point I’d regained limited movement in my arms, but there was no way I could reach up and hit the button to unlock the doors. I did not have the strength. My eyes stung with embarrassment as my friends kept asking me to unlock the door. I felt completely helpless.
I was just about to lose it and start crying when one of my best friends, Richie, leaned forward and fogged up the window next to me. He rubbed off the fog and put his hands dramatically over his eyes, as if he was peering in with binoculars. “Chris, conserve your oxygen!” he yelled in a fake panic. “You have five minutes to live! I need you to breathe slowly!”
My other friends stared at him in shock. Making fun of the situation seemed like a terrible thing to do, but for me it was the best thing he could have done. I burst out laughing as he took me through mock breathing exercises, as if I were running out of oxygen, as the other guys ran to their house to get spare keys. The forty-minute experience could have made for an awful night, but the whole thing was turned around by a little laughter. Right then I realized that being in a wheelchair, with limited physical ability, meant that life might not always be smooth. And that was okay. In fact, it wasn’t a big deal at all.
About seven months after my injury, my family and I decided it was time for me to move home.1 But I didn’t stay there permanently. That fall I returned to Luther College. My sister Alex got an apartment less than a mile from campus so she could get me to my classes, take me to therapy appointments, and help me with homework when I needed it. On campus I lived in a cluster, with a big common room and six double rooms around it. That meant I had ten friends nearby who could help out. And everyone did. That support system gave me the confidence to pursue my education and not give up.
Before classes started I was terrified that the whole college experiment was doomed to fail. But my friends showed me that I could live a pretty normal life. I could get back to how I used to be, but now from a wheelchair. The week before classes started, they even convinced me to go with them to float down a nearby river on inner tubes. “There’s no way I can do that,” I’d told them when they first asked. “That sounds way too scary.”
My friends refused to take no for an answer. “You can do it. Let’s just go,” they said. Finally, they convinced me to suck up my fears and let them bring me along. They gave me a raft that wouldn’t tip and had a backrest. We bought rope to tie my raft with theirs so they could be close by. We left my chair in the vehicle, and two guys carried me to the riverbank, one under my shoulders and the other under my knees. Floating freely in the river turned out to be one of the best experiences I’d had since my injury. I looked and, more importantly, felt like everyone else having a good time floating down the river. For the first time since my accident, I felt “normal.”
While the accident impacted nearly every area of my life, one aspect it thankfully didn’t affect was my family’s finances. Because I was injured in an NCAA game, I was covered by their Catastrophic Insurance Program, which, combined with my mom’s great health insurance policy through her employer, paid for everything I needed. Even after I got out of the hospital, I didn’t have to worry about the cost of physical therapy or the specialized equipment I needed. I could even pay for friends and caregivers to help me get up in the morning or drive me to physical therapy. I soon discovered that my situation was the exception, not the rule, for people who suffer injuries like mine.
On a trip back to Mayo about a year after my injury, I ran into a friend I’d met during my hospital stay. He’d fallen off his tree stand while deer hunting and stayed just one room away from me at Mayo. Both of us were from Iowa, and we bonded during our time there. “What are you doing here?” I asked as we greeted each other in the hall of Mayo Clinic’s rehab center. I was surprised to see him because he had to travel two hours each way to get there.
“Physical therapy, man,” he said. “There are no clinics back home that have this kind of technology. Plus I can use their bike afterward.” Mayo had an RT300 leg and arm therapeutic bike that stimulates your muscles and is great for people with spinal cord injuries and strokes.
My friend wheeled back and gave me the once over. “You’re looking strong. I bet you’ll be walking again in no time.”
“I don’t know if I’m there yet,” I said. “But my therapy has helped a ton.”
My friend didn’t say anything, but I could see pain behind his smile. I knew he wondered how I could afford all the therapy and equipment I had. I realized how unfair the system is. To me, it’s not right that money limits how far good, hard-working people, like my friend, can go in their recovery. To this day, it makes me uncomfortable how fortunate my circumstance is compared to him or anyone else going through this.
I had all this in my mind when I was invited to speak at the Lynch Family Foundation’s annual banquet. This foundation was created to support those who find themselves in financial need, especially need created by health problems. They had heard my story and wanted me to share it.
“Something you should consider is that people get paid to speak,” they mentioned. “As you recover, this could be a career for you. There will be a few speakers in the audience who will speak before you. They might be able to help you get started.”
I’d never spoken anywhere, except in class, but I thought it sounded amazing. I knew I had a powerful story to tell, and who knows, maybe it could help someone.
Despite being extremely nervous, that first time speaking in front of an audience was unbelievable. I shared about making the tackle, my life being flipped upside down because of my spinal cord injury, and the highs and lows of my recovery process. Here and there I saw some nods, some sparks of connection. So I kept going. I emphasized how your circumstances do not determine your future. Your responses to your circumstances do. Even though I felt I didn’t deliver a very good speech, everyone was entranced. The audience laughed and cried, and when I was finished, they gave me a standing ovation. Okay, that was fun, I thought. I want to do that again.
Afterward, the person who’d booked me came to shake my hand. “If you ever want to do anything to help other people or host a fundraiser to pay for anything you need, let us know,” he said. “We can help you out.”
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t need anything, then it hit me. Maybe I didn’t need anything, but I knew plenty of people who did. What if I could help others suffering from spinal injuries with equipment and recovery options they couldn’t afford? That thought prompted me to approach my dad with the idea of starting our own foundation. I knew we could fill a void for people without the kind of insurance I had. My cousin helped me design a website, and we called every family friend who was an accountant or lawyer that we could think of to help us get started.
Within six months we formed a nonprofit and raised thirty-five thousand dollars with our first fundraiser. That was enough to purchase a therapeutic bike like the one my friend used at Mayo, only this one went to Winneshiek Medical Center in Decorah, Iowa, the first place I was taken by ambulance after my accident. I wanted those who couldn’t go to an elite medical center to still have access to top-notch equipment. To raise the funds, my sister Alex and I went door-to-door to different businesses in town to ask for their support in our mission. Today the Chris Norton Foundation has raised close to one million dollars. We’ve helped patients get treatment they couldn’t otherwise afford, sent people to camps for spinal cord injuries, and even started our own camp.
As my foundation evolved, so did my recovery. For far too long, I was convinced that I needed my physical abilities to be happy. My foundation helped me realize that life is about giving yourself to others and helping people. I began to see how I could have a richer life than I ever imagined, even if I never took another step as long as I lived. It also gave me contentment in the present while still having hope for a recovery.