I'd like you to meet my friend, Mike Schwass: National speaker, marvelous coach, gifted therapist and quadriplegic.
A quadriplegic who got to walk again.
I've known him for 15 years. He came to speak at a group I was leading, back when I was working on the spinal cord unit at a rehab hospital during my doctoral internship in psych. Some day I'll share the whole story with you, as it is rather entertaining.
Mike has been a quadriplegic for 30 years. That's hard on a body, and I've known him to be very close to death 3 different times since I have known him. (And maybe there were more times than that which he forgot to let me know about... he's like that.)
And over the years, I've seen the change in him. His transition to the electric wheelchair when his arms started to run out of steam. The way he automatically defers to me to hit the buttons in the elevator, or lift a pop can to his lips, when he used to ask for help only when he got fatigued.
Talking to him you would just experience a vibrant, wonderful, sweet and funny man. Very spiritual with a Buddha smile. You can forget, if you want to, that this is a man who has to pay attention to every little detail to keep that bod running.
And he has to put up with a lot of missteps by the rest of us. And he does this with a grace that humbles me. Like the time I spilled tea on him when I had the slightest lapse of attention while holding the mug for him to sip from. Or the wacky time I almost flipped his chair in the van taking a turn too fast. Oh how we laughed about that one!
For me, Mike is one of a precious few—like 2—people that I feel really understand certain things about life, and who "get" me. Maybe you have someone like that. I hope you have someone like that. Someone that really sees you—right through all your neuroses, or masks, or ups and downs and highs and lows. Your years of being in your game, and those chapters that you'd rather forget, and loving you just the same either way. My husband is like that for me. And so is Mike.
Article comments
1 - DrPat
I don't know which is worse: having a close friend die suddenly, without warning, or having one live under sentence of death.
I just know that both that strength, and having an icon like Armstrong or your friend helps immensely. If he can do it, so can you.
2 - Laura Young
Rock on, Dr Pat,
I also have a friend who is a NINE year survivor of pancreatic cancer. Having one miracle in my life is amazing. Having TWO...Definitely keeps my eyes open. I'm beyond blessed to have known these folks personally.
And you are right in using the word "icon". It's easy to look at people like Lance Armstrong as different or "other", not made of the same human stuff we are.
Mike and I have talked about how his chair can put him in the same category of other (in either a positive or negative way), but when you know someone like this as a person first and foremost a world of wisdom is opened to you.