February 3, 2001, began as a clear, sunny Saturday in Miami, Florida.  As always, I jumped on my Honda Elite scooter at 6:30AM and headed to work.  I am a hairstylist.  At the time, I worked at the Aruj Salon and Spa that I owned with my wife Tamara. Traffic was light at that time of day.  As I motored along Bayshore Drive going towards the center of Coconut Grove, I noticed a couple of large trucks parked along the side of the road.  As I passed the first truck, it suddenly and unexpectedly began to pull out in order to make an illegal turn into what was actually the exit of adjoining Kennedy Park.  It turned out that the convoy was part of a film shoot that was going on at the time.  The project manager had given this driver permission to make the illegal manuever.

I realized that he was about to turn directly into my scooter.  I knew what was about to happen.  I panicked and tried to veer out of his way.  That is my only recollection of the actual impact of the accident.

Eyewitnesses told me that the truck hit me and I flew off of the bike.  I landed on the ground, on my back, and slid into a pole, headfirst.  I was, thankfully, wearing a helmet.

When I came to, I was on the pavement.  I opened my eyes, turned my head from side to side, tried to move my arms and legs, but could not.  For all I knew I was paralyzed.  As a cloud of uncertainty started to envelop me, someone came running over from the park to help.  The first thing I said was, "Take the cell phone from my back pack and call my wife to let her know that I have been in a serious accident and I have a 7AM client waiting at the salon."  It still amazes me that I was able to remember everything so clearly at that moment, and yet nothing of the actual impact.

When rescue arrived they asked if I was in pain, and I told them the only hurt I could feel was from my tongue.  As I showed them, they tried to lighten things up a bit by saying that my tongue looked filleted.  I had bitten down so hard from hitting the pole that I nearly sliced off a third of it.

As I was put into the ambulance, everything became a blur until we arrived at the E.R. of Jackson Memorial Trauma Center.  My wife Tamara actually saw the ambulance I was in after she dropped our daughter Bliss off at a friend's house as a result of getting the call notifying her of the accident.  She followed it and met me at the hospital.  Sirens, helicopters, people screaming, yelling, running.  When Tamara arrived, for the first time I felt a little better, although I realized our lives with our daughter would probably be ruined by Bliss not having her Daddy available like before.  I remember crying.

Tamara was telling someone that I am a hairstylist and when mentioning the name of the salon, they recognized that one of neurosurgeons, Dr. Allan Levy, was a client.  Dr. Levy's child was also attending the same school as Bliss, so we all knew each other.  He was called and fortunately for me brought in one of the finest brain and spine teams in the country with him.

At the hospital, they determined that my neck was broken in three places - at C3/4, C5/6, and C/7 (Cervical).  The real problem is at the C/5 level.  The disc had nicked the central cord and created an incomplete spinal cord injury.  Most cases like this result in complete paralysis.  The minor injuries were five broken ribs, a broken scapula, and a collapsed lung.  I had to wait six days to stabilize due to swelling of the spine and fluid in the lungs.

I was wheeled into surgery.  The surgeons fused my neck from C/3 to C/7 with a titanium plate.  In the meantime, my family had gathered in the waiting room and with the assistance of a doctor and psychologist were trying to absorb what had happened and what the future might look like - namely, me probably spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair and the changes that would bring to our lives.

Later in the recovery room, and during the ensuing sleepless days and nights in my hospital room, I started to think.  I realized I did not want to ruin my family's life.  My daughter Bliss was three and a half at the time.  She and my wife Tamara needed me.  So I made up my mind.  I resolved to get well.  I decided that to do so, I couldn't leave my fate solely in the hands of the doctors.  With all the testing that was being done on me for reflex response, sensitivity, and perception, things were looking pretty bleak, and they simply could not promise me anything.  I decided it was up to me to take control.

As an aside, it should be noted that Jackson is a hospital known to specialize in brain and spine rehabilitation, and the rehab center is set up in a brilliant way (almost like a dorm) where you are always with people of the same challenges.  Tamara and I hoped that I could stay there, but even though Tamara made dozens of phone calls, our insurance company would not let me stay.  They work with Baptist Hospital, which specializes in heart and stroke patients.  At Baptist after your daily rehab sessions, you go back to your room within the general population and are left to your own mental process with the exception of a visit here and there from a doctor or nurse.

So we reluctantly moved to Baptist, but as it turns out the therapists I worked with there were truly brilliant and loving.  They are the ones who assisted me in setting goals that I believe played a large part towards my recovery.

One day, some people came to my bedside from an organization to help us set up our home to make our lives easier, like getting a hospital bed for our family room on the ground floor so I would not have to worry about getting to our upstairs bed, and contraptions to help me feed myself.

That really scared me.  The next day when the therapist in rehab asked me what I wanted to work on, I said, "I want to learn how to climb stairs so that I can get to my own bed that I share with my wife." 

After that it was learning how to get into our car so that I could go home and visit for a day...and so on.

Many years before all of this...roughly 1986...I had the good fortune of being introduced to a man named Horst Rechelbacher, founder of Aveda.  During a simple hair cutting seminar he began to introduce our entire industry to a new way of working in a salon. This involved being consciencious about the products we used as well as our actions as professionals.  Horst taught environmental awareness and lifestyle both at work and home.  Through this transistion there were many opportunities to learn about holistic approaches to health, such as Ayurveda (an ancient Indian philosophy of wellness) and other complementary modalities.  This was definitely the foundation laid many years before so I would have a clue now regarding how to be empowered to use my inner physician, or to put it another way, to use my innate healing system.

I kept returning to the same idea over and over.  As long as you believe something, your brain operates on automatic pilot, filtering out input from the environment and searching for references to validate your belief, regardless of what it is.  People with beliefs have such strong levels of certainty they are often closed off to new input.  I resolved that I would remain open to all new input.  This would be the secret to my recovery.

One of the modalities I had been reading about was visualization - something that is used today by most professional and many non-professional athletes.  Basically, the idea is that by picturing an outcome in your mind, over and over again, the outcome gradually manifests in real life.  While in my hospital bed, I would close my eyes and try to picture my nerve endings.  In my mind they appeared as though they were dancing around in my body, searching for a connection.  I visualized them making those connections, over and over and over again.

I thought some more.  I realized that in my line of work, I had access to an extensive complement of professionals who helped people feel better, people often outside of the mainstream.  So Tamara and I contacted everyone we could think of - massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, acupuncture specialists, aromatherapists, etc., and asked them to come and work with me.  Soom my hospital room was a busy hive of alternative therapies.  People came in and out with herbs, audio tapes, nutritional supplements, enzymes, massage oils, bee pollen...you name it.  I was ready and willing to try anything and everything.

Reiki, for example, involves tapping into your "life force energy" to improve health.  I also worked with a CranioSacral therapist, and that modality involves using very slight pressure (about 5 grams of weight) to improve the flow of cerebrospinal fluid between the cranium and the sacrum.  Lately, I have been trying yet another approach which is called Body Transformation through the vibrational effects of having crystal bowls drummed or played while on your body at key points. The belief is that one's body picks up these vibrations and starts to reorganize on a cellular level.

At the same time, I also took advantage of more traditional opportunities.  I was fortunate to be treated by gifted neurosurgeons and other physicians.  I worked with caring, dedicated physical and occupational therapists.  When I felt depressed, or when I noticed that my family was not coping well with the upheaval in our lives, I enlisted the aid of a family therapist.

Also, angels come in many forms.  I was in the hospital for a long time, going in and out of MRIs and all the other testing that happens with no emotional or nurturing aspects.  While the nurses that I saw were incredibly kind, they are only there for a shift and then comes another one and another one after that...so little by little you start to forget what it is like to be connected emotionally and spiritually as well.

One day at Baptist, after about two months of physical therapy, a beautiful older German Shepherd therapy dog and his owner was brought in to visit me.  I looked at this dog as if to say, "So what do you expect me to do?"  Well, all it took was this dog walking over and nuzzling me and I realized that it was a connection that made me feel more whole.  No dialogue needed, no testing, and no judgement of any kind...the next thing I remember is learning how to walk with assistance at the parallel bars for the first time.

As time went on, when I got tired or impatient with one modality, I switched to something else.  Somebody would mention Feldenkrais Therapy (a way of working with the awareness of one's body to improve movement) or Pilates, and I would give it a try.  When I got discouraged, I would think about Bliss, and her three-and-a-half year old wisdom.

Three weeks after the accident, (I had moved to Baptist by then), Tamara and I decided Bliss could finally visit because I wasn't too scary looking any more.  She came prepared to go on a picnic by the lake on the hospital property.  When she entered the room, her first words were, "Daddy, I love your neck brace!"  After our picnic Tamara wheeled me back to the room.  Bliss climbed on my lap and whispered into my ear, "Daddy, you have to come home.  It's your responsibility."  During a later visit when I was feeling particularly despondent she said, "Daddy, if you keep sitting there like that people are going to think you are dead."

Over the next 3 1/2 years, I progressed from a wheelchair, to a walker, to crutches, to canes, to one cane, and finally, to no cane at all. 

Today, I work in the salon four half-days each week.  I ride a stationary bicycle, and as I was an avid cyclist prior to the accident, my goal is to get back on the road.  I have taken up the piano to strengthen my hands and improve my dexterity.  Swimming has been excellent for building body strength and flexibility, and I use a small trampoline for exercising my reflexes.  My handwriting is finally back to normal - and it is just as bad as it ever was!

I am still not 100% healed, but I am miles and miles beyond the doctors' original dire predictions.  I remember one day after I had started back to work at the salon part time, one of the doctors from my original surgical team came in and was astonished at the way I could answer the phone with my right hand, and the dexterity I had using the computer.  He said it was miraculous compared to the last time he had seen me at Jackson.

Unfortunately, I keep learning the hard way that my immune system is not yet what it used to be, and therefore I am succeptible to colds and viruses, which can be a real setback.  So I really need to pay strict attention to my diet and always be in "preventative" mode.  Most of the credit for my ability to do this goes to my wife, Tamara.

I attribute my recovery to three things.  First, to the love and support of my family and friends.  They never gave up on me and they never, ever, let me quit, even though the process was often excruciatingly painful and difficult.

Second, I truly believe that by keeping an open mind, exploring every possible treatment and modality whether traditional or alternative, customizing these treatments to fit your needs, and trusting that you will get better, YOU WILL GET BETTER.

Third, my trade, the beauty industry.  I have always loved my craft.  From that day at beauty school when my friend Mimi, a University of Miami student at the time, sat in my chair and said "Do whatever you want," I fell head over heels in love with the creative process of working with hair.  In my rehabilitation, I realized I might not ever have the opportunity to do hair again, so that is why I started extra hand therapy by taking up the piano, and practicing cut and color work again.

The specific answers are different for everyone.  A combination of a healthy diet, Visualization Techniques, Acupuncture, CranioSacral Therapy, and Thai Massage turned out to be the most effective thus far for me.  For you it could be a combination of Reiki, Shiatsu, and Meditation, or perhaps Pilates, Ayurvedic Treatment and Weight Training.

The main thing to remember, I believe, is that by taking control of your own life, you give yourself power.  With that power comes change, and ultimately, healing.  It all starts with trust.  Trust in yourself.  Trust in others. With that trust, your chances for healing are magnified beyond imagination.         

                                  TRUST...THEN HEAL.