LIVE QUICKIE BLOG

After three weeks in the Intensive Care Unit, Josh was ready to be airlifted by private jet to the Shepherd Center. This trip was delayed for several days due to his very low blood pressure. Finally the day came and he was loaded up and ready to go! I left hours before Josh did, in hope arriving before he got there. The timing was perfect. Within 15 minutes of my arrival, he arrived in a local ambulance that met him at the airport.

In addition to his C5-C6 incomplete spinal cord injury, Josh sustained a fractured pelvis, perforated bladder, fractured sternum, fractured left elbow, T4 compression fracture, and contused lung from nearly being impaled by a large stick just below his left scapula. The elbow fracture would require surgery to repair. However, we had to wait on this due to his dangerously low blood pressure.

It was a beautiful autumn morning on Thursday, October 18th, 2007. The morning sunshine was brilliant as it danced on the colorful leaves. Unbeknownst to me, hundreds of miles away in Kentucky, my son Josh climbed into an unfamiliar sports car for a quick spin.

Growing up confined to a wheelchair has had its ups and downs. At an early age I chose to make my life exactly as I wanted it to be. We all have the power to write our own story.

If you would have told me when I was a young boy, with no legs from the pelvis down due to genetic disease, that I would climb the largest mountain in Africa, Mt. Kilimanjaro, on my hands and in my wheelchair I would have said, "No way."