No Turning Back

by Bryan Anderson

  Look, everyone has limitations, maybe some people more than others, but we all have something. It could be physical—from birth, as a result of an accident, illness, or age. But there are other things, too—mental health or emotional issues, economic disadvantages, educational or skill disadvantages. Look, we’re not all created the same. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses. It’s what we do with what we’ve got—or don’t have—that really matters.

  The way I see it, we can either focus on the things we can’t do or we can figure out another way to do them. We have to use the tools we have to find ways to do the things we think we can’t.

  Probably everyone knows someone or has heard of a kid who had a lot of trouble with schoolwork until the teachers figured out he had dyslexia. Before he was diagnosed with this learning disorder that makes reading difficult, his grades were terrible and maybe he was going to be left back. But once he got the proper tutoring and learned some new skills, he was able to do a lot better and his grades improved. He just needed the tools to overcome his limitations.

  Look at me. I’ve got one hand.

  A simple task that most people take for granted but that I now think of as a challenge is dealing with buttons on clothing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shirt or a coat: you can’t easily fasten or unfasten small buttons with one hand. At least, that’s what I used to think, when I was just starting my rehab. Now I can do it easily. So what changed? What changed is the way I approach the problem.

  At first, I thought my prosthetic hand was useless for tasks like this, small actions calling for fine-motor skills. Then my therapists gave me a special tool to use for buttoning. It’s an easy-to-grip handle with a long, narrow metal loop; you stick it through the buttonhole, hook the button with the loop, and pull the button back through the hole. With a little practice I was able to master this “simple” task once again. That is, until I lost the tool. But this time I wasn’t as discouraged. I had found one alternative way to deal with small buttons, and I could find another. Sure, the prosthetic hand wasn’t precise enough to manipulate shirt buttons, but my right hand still was. I had to get over my inability to do things the way I used to and accept that I had to learn a new way of getting the job done. And after a bit of trial and error and some practice, I taught myself to manipulate small buttons with my right hand and my teeth.

  Once I stopped dwelling on the hand I’d lost and learned to use the tool I’d been given in rehab, buttoning a shirt became a possibility for me again. It’s still not easy, but I can do it, and that’s what matters.

  It’s not so hard to fall into the trap of thinking there’s only one way to do things. When life makes our old methods impossible, a lot of us just stop trying. I saw guys at Walter Reed who’d lost a leg and decided they would never walk again. Sure, they could have learned to use a prosthetic, but they had it in their minds that they couldn’t do it. And you know what? With that attitude, they couldn’t.

  If you lose a tool that you rely on, it’s not an excuse to give up. It’s your cue to learn how to use another tool or to change your way of working so you can get the job done with the tools you still have. Most people, if they lost a hand, would just give up and say, “I can’t button a shirt.” They’d settle for always having someone else help them, and they’d give up a bit of their independence as a result.

  I’m telling you right here, right now: that’s not good enough.

  There is always another way. It’s your responsibility to find it. It might take trial and error. Try something new. You may fail ninety-nine times, but that hundredth attempt might be the ticket to success.

  It might be a matter of thinking of things another way. Instead of thinking about abilities you no longer have, focus on those you do have and see if there’s a way to accomplish your goal with them.

  Sometimes it might help to talk to someone and get a completely fresh perspective. You might be too close to the situation. The answer might be obvious, but you need a fresh set of eyes to see it.

  Sometimes you really do hit a wall, though, and I understand that. My basic prosthetic hand, for instance, has some real limitations. I can’t use it to pick up a penny off the ground. I just don’t have the necessary fine-motor control in my fingers.

  But I have three different kinds of attachments for my left arm. Besides a hand, I have a hook and a gripper. With the hook, I can pick up a penny—or a pen, or a book, or whatever. Maybe the hook doesn’t look as “natural” as my prosthetic hand, but it’s the right tool for the job, so if I need it, I use it. The gripper attachment is the better choice for when I’m handling tools, such as when I’m working on a car.

  Just because what I have doesn’t look like a natural hand doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use it. I have to use what I can in order to do what I need to do, and I can’t worry about what it looks like.

  It’s kind of like watching monkeys break open coconuts with rocks. Monkeys don’t get self-conscious because they can’t rip open coconuts with their bare hands. They hit them with rocks and branches, and they experiment with new ways of busting those things open. They slam them on boulders and do whatever they have to—whatever works. That’s what we all need to do in life, no matter what we’re dealing with. Find a way. Make new tools out of anything we find and never give up. Find a way to get the job done and break into that coconut.

  I bet you wouldn’t think a guy with one arm and no legs could do automotive repairs, would you? Well, I can. For my younger sister Briana’s eighteenth birthday, I wanted to surprise her by giving her a car. I bought her BMW. Okay, a used 1994 BMW. It ran all right, but there were certain things wrong with it. The interior leather was all messed up, the tires and the rims were nasty, and the headlights and taillights were old and didn’t work properly. But it was still a BMW, right?

  Then I got a crazy notion in my head: I wanted to make that car like new for her, and I decided to do the work myself. I mean, why not? I have mechanical knowledge. And what I didn’t know I could look up. I’m not completely illiterate. I know how to do things and follow directions, and doing the work myself would make the gift more meaningful. It would really be from me and not just from my wallet.

  To make sure I wasn’t getting in over my head, I planned the whole job before I started. I broke down each task into a series of steps and made sure I knew how I would get them all done. It might sound like a lot of trouble, but once I sat down and figured it all out, I realized it was totally doable. It was just a matter of being prepared. I also knew that if I needed help with any part of it, my dad and my cousin Chris were only a phone call away (and they both pitched in at my request on a few occasions).

  The next day I logged on to the Internet and ordered all the parts I needed. A couple of weeks later, after all the parts arrived, I put on my gripper, went down to my garage, and did the work. I jacked up the car and changed all the tires. I brought that car back to life one piece at a time and made it the best it could be, inside and out.

  I could tell that I was doing something special. I took my time and made sure it was done right. Let me tell you, it felt good.

  What I’m driving at by telling you this is that you need to know about the tools that are available to you. You should know what each one is for, its strengths and weaknesses, what it can and can’t help you do. Most important, you should know there’s nothing wrong with using them. Some people hit a wall and decide, If I can’t do this the way I used to, there’s no point.

  That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with the tools at your disposal.

  Other people get discouraged when they start learning new ways to do old tasks because the new way takes longer. Well, you know what? It’s only going to take you longer the first ten or fifteen times you do it. That may seem like a long time, depending on what you’re learning, but we’re talking about the difference between being able to do it yourself or having to ask for help for the rest of your life. Fifteen times isn’t so bad compared to that. After those fi
fteen times, it’s gonna be like second nature. You just need to be patient and give yourself time to learn.

  That’s what I’m doing all the time. I’m using whatever I can find to do what I need to do and live the way I want to live. I use everything around me, and if I don’t find what I need, I ask other people to help me find or make what I need.

  I think I developed this attitude while learning how to fight. In the military—during basic training and again later, when I was learning to be a military policeman—I received instruction in hand-to-hand combat. The U.S. Army teaches soldiers to fight dirty. They teach us to win and make sure we stay alive and get ourselves out of danger, no matter what it takes. That’s where I learned to use anything I could get my hands on: chairs, pens, rocks, bottles, dirt—whatever. I was taught to do whatever is necessary to slow down my enemy and gain the upper hand. In a fight, every advantage, no matter how small, is valuable.

  Now I apply that same way of thinking to my everyday life. Being a triple amputee, I learned quickly that I had to use the world around me. When I first got into a wheelchair, I thought the only way I could move was to put my hands on top of the wheels and push. Soon I was getting really tired, because it takes a lot of effort to move that way.

  One day I was going up a hill. I was fighting for every inch. My hand was rubbed red and raw from pressing on the tires, and my shoulders were killing me. Every push made me feel like I was gonna rip the skin off my palm.

  Between gasping for breaths I was muttering, “This sucks!”

  Then I looked to my right and saw a metal railing that ran along the sidewalk. At that moment I felt as if something in my mind finally kicked into gear. I looked down at myself, and then I reached for the railing and said, “Wait, let me try this.”

  I grabbed the railing and pulled myself forward as hard as I could—and I flew nearly twenty feet. It was awesome! Instead of creeping up that hill, I was racing up it. That was all it took to change the way I thought about moving in my chair. To hell with putting my hands on the wheels, I decided. I’m just doing this!

  Since then, I’ve learned to use my surroundings to my advantage. Every doorway, desk, railing, and countertop I can reach is a tool waiting to be used, and I’m not shy about using them.

  One thing you shouldn’t do is let your pride stop you from using the tools you need. And don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Never worry about looking weak or even foolish. It’s a lot dumber to settle for a crappy situation than it is to trust someone to help you when you need it.

  Let me give you a perfect example of what I mean. A few years ago, I was in Pennsylvania on one of my visits to the corporate headquarters of Quantum Rehab. I was staying in a hotel. The bathroom in my hotel room was really small, and it wasn’t handicapped accessible. It was just big enough that I could roll my wheelchair inside and park it in front of the toilet, next to the tub. The sink and mirror were outside, in the main part of the room.

  One morning around seven, I rolled into my bathroom so I could take a shower and get ready to go to work. I pulled back the shower curtain, looked up, and saw that the showerhead was turned toward the wall. I shook my head and wondered, Who does that? Why the fuck would you do that?

  I tried to reach it, but I couldn’t—I’ve got no legs, remember? Fed up, I thought maybe I could live with it. I turned on the shower. The water ran down the wall and into the drain.

  I couldn’t use the shower like that, not even if I got under it and tried to splash the water onto myself. Maybe I could work up a lather, I realized, but how would I rinse it off?

  Forget it, I decided. It wasn’t working.

  I started looking around, searching for a way to fix the problem. After a few seconds, I thought I had cooked up a possible solution. I reached over and put the toilet lid down. Then I lifted myself onto it, turned to face the bathroom door, and hoisted myself up onto the back of the toilet, on top of the water tank.

  So far, so good.

  My back was against the wall. I stuck my arms out wide to help me keep my balance. The showerhead was above me and to my left. I leaned left and stretched my prosthetic hand toward the showerhead. Then I realized I wouldn’t be able to grasp the showerhead with that hand. I was going to need real fingers to do this job. I would have to get my right hand over there.

  The biggest problem I had right then was the size of my perch. The tank of that toilet was so small, so narrow, that if I so much as dropped my head to look down, I was gonna swan-dive right off that thing. Keeping my head up and my eyes forward, I tucked my right hand to my chest and slowly slid it toward my left side.

  To be honest, I don’t know what I was thinking. I could barely reach the showerhead with my left hand—there was no way I could reach it with my right hand from that position. I must have been really desperate for that shower, though, because I told myself, Fuck it, just go!

  I went for it. I lunged and made a wild grab for the showerhead.

  I fell off the toilet and my shoulder hit the lid on my way down. The impact catapulted me off the seat and onto the side of the tub. My ribs smacked against the edge, and then I flipped and landed on my back inside the bathtub.

  For a few seconds I just lay there, looking up at the showerhead . . . and then I started laughing as I asked myself, Why didn’t I just call the front desk?

  I guess I didn’t think of it sooner because I had gotten into the habit of always doing things for myself. That moment in the tub became a major learning experience for me. I had taught myself the hard way that it’s not always a bad thing to ask for help. When there are people you can reach out to, people whose job it is to help you, don’t be afraid to call on them. That’s what they’re there for. Always look for the simplest answer. Don’t think you have to risk taking a header off a toilet when an easier solution is just a phone call away.

  I took this lesson to heart and put it to good use not too long afterward, when I got interested in learning to ride quad ATVs (all-terrain vehicles).

  The first day I went riding quads in the hills outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, I was a passenger on the back of a vehicle driven by a guy named Casey. After we’d been driving awhile, we stopped at a place called the Landfill. It’s a wide-open area where you can just let it rip really fast. There are all kinds of bumps and dips, so you can jump and stuff.

  Another rider, a guy named Marcel, said to me, “Hey, man. My bike’s automatic, and it’s got power steering, and the brakes are up here by the steering wheel, so you could ride it.”

  “Really?” I said. “Awesome!”

  “You want to take it for a quick spin?”

  “Sure!” I hopped onto his quad and figured out pretty quickly how to maneuver it. At the time I was wearing one of my regular prosthetic hands, but I could see that if I had been using a different kind of prosthetic, one fitted with a ball-and-socket-style adapter to keep it locked to the steering wheels, I’d really be able to do this.

  So I took a run on the quad. Man, that thing could fly! I loved the thrill of acceleration, that feeling of being right on the edge of danger; it made me feel more alive than I’d felt in months. Every part of it was a rush—the engine’s throaty roar, the rich odor of gasoline, the dusty grit on my teeth, and the cool blast of wind in my hair. It was power, speed, and freedom all at the same time. I’d never felt anything quite like it.

  At one point, as I was coming off a jump, I got that ATV like six inches off the ground. I was psyched. “All right!” I felt pumped. I knew this was for me.

  I was ready to spend some money to make ATVs a part of my life. I was ready to make it work. I wanted to do it, so I knew I would figure out a way to make it happen.

  After I bought my own quad and took it out for a ride, I realized, Hey, I could fall off this thing really easily. One good bump and I could get tossed clean off. I gotta do something about that. To keep myself from ending up as roadkill, I came up with the idea of side pads to hold my hips where they belonged on th
e seat.

  It was a fine notion, but not one that I was qualified to do for myself. Fortunately, I had learned by taking a header off a toilet that I don’t need to do everything on my own.

  I returned to my office at Quantum Rehab and said to the company’s mechanics and engineers, “Yo, I need some paddles on this thing. Something to keep my hips in.”

  They had me bring the quad to the shop at company headquarters. Once they started working on it, they had a field day. They customized it, made the paddles adjustable, and built the whole thing with spare parts—all on their own time.

  What is the moral of this story? Solving problems is all about figuring things out, thinking up solutions, and getting it done. You can sit there and talk about a problem all you want, but nothing’s ever gonna get better unless you get off your ass and do something about it. That doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself, though. Telling the right person about your problem at the right time can go a long way toward fixing things. But it all starts with having the drive to stop talking and start doing.

  I bet I know what you’re thinking. That all sounds nice, Bryan, but how am I supposed to use this? I’ve got real problems. How do I find the tools to fix them?

  First, there is no one answer to this question. The tools that work for me might not work for you. We all have our own issues, and that means we all need to make our own solutions. The “tools you’ve been given” can mean a lot of things. It’s not just your natural abilities or your physical attributes. Your friends, your family, the government, your school or college, even a piece of music or a story that means something to you—these are all tools you can use to change your life, directly or indirectly. Getting help from friends, taking advantage of a government program, or taking classes can help you out in short-term or long-term ways. Just listening to some great music can calm you down or cheer you up when you need it most. Even the phone book can be a valuable tool, if you’re willing to use it.