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Becoming A Master Student, Tenth Edition
Dave Ellis | | | |
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Christopher Reeve never knew why the horse he was riding in a competition on Memorial Day, 1995, suddenly stopped in its tracks. That stop sent Reeve flying directly over the horse's head with his hands entangled in the reins. Reeve landed directly on his head, breaking his first and second vertebrae. Had he fallen with his head twisted slightly to the left, he would have been killed instantly. Instead, the accident left him quadriplegic, paralyzed below the neck and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.
Reeve was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Culpeper, Virginia, near the site of the competition. He was later flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical School. His doctor recommended surgery-an operation to reattach Reeve' skull to his spinal column.
Reeve knew that his chances of surviving the operation were only about 50 percent. He questioned the risks - and his very desire to go on living. He feared becoming immobile and ending up a burden to his family. "Why not die and save everyone a lot of trouble?" he said to himself. But his wife, Dana, promised to support him, no matter what. She uttered the words that Reeve said saved his life: "You're still you. And I love you."
Until his accident, Reeve had a promising career as an actor. He became a celebrity through his roles in four Superman films. In addition, Reeve was an accomplished stage actor. At the time of his accident, he had already planned a trip to Ireland to act in Kidnapped, a film to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola.
Reeve also led an active life off stage. He'd sailed since age 7 and flown planes for over 20 years, making two solo trips across the Atlantic. He skied, played tennis, and enjoyed scuba diving.
In his autobiography Still Me (1998), Reeve reported that two things helped him reconstruct his life after the accident. One was the choice to create a vision for his future: "I gradually stopped wondering, What life do I have? And began to consider, What life can I build? Is there a way to be useful, maybe to other people in my predicament?" Most of all, he looked for a way to participate meaningfully in his family life.
The second source of help was a new outlook. Reeve had never been religious in any traditional sense. But he concluded that spirituality itself, "the belief that there is something greater than ourselves, is enough." According to Reeve, God does not cause catastrophic accidents but does enter human life as grace - the power to respond positively to tragedy.
Reeve's new outlook also led him to re-think what it meant to be a hero:
When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequently asked question was "What is a hero?" I remember how easily I'd talk about it, the glib response I repeated so many times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. A soldier who crawls out of a foxhole to drag an injured buddy back to safety, the prisoners of war who never stop trying to escape even though they know they may be executed if they're caught. . . .Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. . . Travis Roy, paralyzed in the first eleven seconds of a hockey game in his freshman year at college. Henry Steifel, paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident at seventeen, completing his education and working on Wall Street at age thirty-two. . . These are the heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.
Reeve succeeded in reinventing his family life and creating work that contributed to others. As the head of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which funds medical research to develop new treatments for paralysis, he testified before Congress promoting the possibilities of finding a cure for paralysis using embryonic stem cells. Reeve was an orator, speaking on behalf of all people with disabilities, and providing hope and courage to all who revered in his determination to live.
In September of 2003, Reeve moved an index finger, a remarkable feat for someone who had been paralyzed for 8 years. Such progress after a severe accident was unprecedented. "You have to take action and stand up for yourself - even if you're sitting in a wheelchair," he said in an interview with Psychology Today in 2003.
His lobbying for public health issues helped earn him the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service in 2003. The Lasker Public Service Award is for individuals who are supporting the infrastructure of science and medicine to make possible the great advances in medical carei.
Reeve returned to work in film after his accident. He directed In the Gloaming, a movie for HBO about a young man with AIDS who returns home to die (1997). The show won respectable ratings and earned him five Emmy nominations. He performed in a remake of Hitchcock's classic Rear Window, for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award for best actor in a television movie or miniseries.
Reeve's final project was as director of The Brooke Ellison Story, about a girl who became a quadriplegic at age 11, but through the support of her family graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude in 2000 (broadcast on A&E).
Throughout his life, Reeve found strength through focusing on the present moment, an idea expressed in Power Process #2: "Be here now." Instead of dwelling on memories of what he could do before his accident, Reeve remained focused on what he could do in the present. Up until his death in 2004, he required constant medical care from a team of nurses and health aides. He reportedly never "adjusted" to his disability. Though he acknowledged that people are more than their bodies, he found it difficult to live by that philosophy. He was jealous when he saw friends embrace each other or talk about their ski vacations. And he lamented the fact that he was not able to hug his children since 1995.
"I have to stop this cascade of memories, or at least take them out of the drawer for a moment, have a brief look, and put them back," Reeve wrote. "Just as my accident and its aftermath caused me to re-define what a hero is, I've had to take a hard look at what it means to live as fully as possible in the present."
More information is available for each of the Master Student Profiles that appear in Becoming a Master Student. Start by visiting these web sites to find out more about Christopher Reeve. Then, use your favorite search engine to find more information. Remember to think critically about information you find online.
Student Voice: If you find a URL that you think your fellow Master Students will find helpful in researching a Master Student Profile, submit your findings to College Survival for posting on this web site.
Mail to: csweb.collegesurvival@cengage.com
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