Mark Zupan was a college soccer star, out drinking one night with friends. Tired from the game and from a few too many beers, he decided to take a nap in the back of his best friend's pickup truck. Still asleep when the vehicle started and drove away, he was suddenly jolted awake as the truck crashed. Mark was thrown into a canal and was stuck in frigid water, barely clinging to a tree branch, for fourteen hours. When he was finally rescued, Mark discovered the terrible truth- he'd broken his neck and would most likely be a quadriplegic, facing life in a wheelchair, with only limited use of his four limbs.
Inside Cover
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 01:19PM Mark Zupan was a college soccer star, out drinking one night with friends. Tired from the game and from a few too many beers, he decided to take a nap in the back of his best friend's pickup truck. Still asleep when the vehicle started and drove away, he was suddenly jolted awake as the truck crashed. Mark was thrown into a canal and was stuck in frigid water, barely clinging to a tree branch, for fourteen hours. When he was finally rescued, Mark discovered the terrible truth- he'd broken his neck and would most likely be a quadriplegic, facing life in a wheelchair, with only limited use of his four limbs.
At first Mark's only goal was to walk again, and when that proved impossible, he fell into the depths of despair and retreated from the world and from the people closest to him, increasingly bitter and furious with himself. But through love, friendship, and an introduction to a new sport, Mark realized that he could live a more-than-full life in a chair and has gone on to create an existence that's truly exceptional. Now a Paralympic athlete (Playing quad rugby, aka "Murderball") who's starred in a movie, Mark explains in his memoir that, in a way, getting hurt was the best thing that could ever have happened to him- and that despite people's prejudices, a guy in a chair still gets to have sex with his girlfriend, party with his friends, and even crowd-surf at Perl Jam shows. Inspiring, defiant, and revealing. GIMP will appeal not only to fans of Murderball but also to anyone ready to be motivated by a touching, captivating, and heartfelt story about triumphing over adversity.
-Inside Cover
When Life Deals You A Crappy Hand
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:05PM When life deals you a crappy hand, you can fold- or you can play.
-Cover
Sport
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:22PM Sport is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theater where the sinner can turn saint and a common man become an uncommon hero, where the past and future can fuse with the present. Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.
-George Sheehan: Distance runner, philosopher, and author
Pg 4-5
Traumatic Injury
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:26PM Traumatic injury can have a similar effect. It's a giant lens that makes you refocus your life. It's an X-ray for the guts and soul, the ultimate bullshit test. It forces you to inspect what you're truly made of, past the fatty layers of self-deceit and denial, clear down to the bone and marrow of your true being. Break your neck and you'll quickly get to know yourself. Intimately. You'll learn who your true friends are. You'll figure out what family really means. You'll stop worrying about stupid shit. You'll become thankful for moments that most people would consider inconsequential. And like Sheehan says, you'll finally become your own potential.
Pg 5
Adversity
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:30PM I have learned that the true measure of a man is not necessarily the adversity he faces, but how he faces adversity.
Pg 5
Regrets
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:32PM I've also learned that regrets suck a whole of a lot more than apologies.
Pg 5
Move On Or Die
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:33PM Injury can be like a rebirth, because you learn that you can't live in the past. Either you move on with your life or you wither away and die.
Pg 6
Life Is Going To Kick You In The Nuts
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 02:36PM At some point, life is going to give you a swift, hard kick to the nuts. You can't control everything that happens to you, but you can try to understand it. For me, this has been just one of the many things I've learned in this painful, beautiful, crappy, exhilarating, stupid, rewarding life that started the day I landed in this chair- which I though was my cross to bear, but was actually my salvation.
-Pg 7
Driving Drunk
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 05:28PM He had driven home drunk from parties before. All our friends, including me, had been intoxicated behind the wheel at one time or another, and so far, non of us had been busted. But our buddy Mike MacDonald, who had played football with us at Douglas, had lost his little brother to a drunk driver a few years ago, and then there was that accident our senior year when a bunch of kids were driving out to the Glades to party and crashed into a canal. Five of them drowned. So we were aware of the consequences.
Pg 51
It's All About Angles
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 05:32PM I was a little pudgy at this age and couldn't run as fast as some of the other boys, so I learned to anticipate the ball as a way to beat them. It was just pure logic to me: if you could figure out where the ball was going to be, you wouldn't always have to sprint to get there. It was weird I can remember envisioning the field as a grid, and seeing how different players should simultaneously slide in and out of different squares.
Pg 60
You Made The Mistake. You Have To Figure It Out
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 05:37PM There was nothing to do in Pewaukee except play sports, cruise, and hang out in the Burger King parking lot on Friday nights, trying to convince girls to give us their phone numbers. Bean and I were kicking it there with some friends during Homecoming weekend when an egg came flying through the air and splattered against my buddy's windshield. Tires screeched from the street, and the kids who threw the eggs shouted some stupid bullshit at us. It was like the Pewaukee equivalent of a drive-by shooting, and being the ninth-grade BMOC that we were, we weren't about to be disrespected like that.
"Let's get these motherfuckers," Bean said.
Five of us crammed into my friends tiny Ford Escort hatchback, probably looking like the clown act at the circus. When Bean climbed in, the bottom of the car sagged an extra couple of inches and the undercarriage scraped as we exited the parking lot. We immediately drove to the only supermarket in Pewaukee and bought several cartons of eggs. We spent the next few hours tearing around the quiet, tree-lined streets, looking for the guys who had dissed us. We eventually found them in their Ford Bronco back by the Burger King and pelted their vehicle. They hit us back and started to chase our yolk covered car around town, flying around corners and flooring it dangerously down the boulevards. Someone splattered egg on a black Trans Am, and it started to follow us at high speed as well.
After a while, we heard the wail of the police siren. The other two cars quickly veered off in different directions, but the cop stayed on our tail and we knew we were screwed. He took all five of us downtown to jail, where he called our parents. The only ray of light on that awful evening was that he got my mom on the phone instead of my father, who was sleeping. They gave her the details about why I had been detained and then told her that she needed to come down to the station so I could be released into her custody.
"I'm not coming to pick him up," she told the police. "He can stay in jail tonight or you can bring him here."
They brought me home in the back of the cop car.
"You really made some interesting choices tonight," my mom said sternly as we sat in the kitchen.
"I know," I said. To be totally honest, I was a little freaked out. I wasn't the kind of kid who got into trouble very often. I mean, I had to stay after school a few times for talking back to teachers and had certainly been on punishment at home for kicking the crap out of Jeff and staying out too late, but I had never been in trouble with the law before.
"You know also that you are going to be grounded for a very long time," she said, giving me that tired look of supreme disappointment that mothers tend to give their wayward sons after they get arrested. "A very, very, very long time."
"Yes," I said, not wanting to hear what my father would have to say about my interesting choices. Let's just say he wasn't amused.
I thought that would be the end of it, but later, each one of us received a fine of several hundred dollars for disturbing the peace and destruction of private property.
"What are you going to do?" my mom asked, holding the letter from the police in her hand. "How do you plan on paying these fines?"
"I don't know," I said. I wasn't about to ask my parents for help.
"You made the mistake," she said. "You have to figure out how you are going to deal with this on your own." She gave me an impersonal pat on the back. "You'll be able to handle it. I have confidence in you."
Pg 66-67
It's Not Your Fault
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 05:57PM "I'm so sorry," Igoe said to the entire room, overcome with remorse. "Is Mark going to be okay?"
No one knew what to say.
My father stood up and walked over to him and grabbed him by the arm.
"Chris," my dad said. "I need to talk to you outside. Now."
He thought that my dad was going to take him down the hall and beat the shit out of him. As soon as they were alone in the hall, Igoe broke down.
"I'm so sorry," he said, bawling, his tears smearing on my dad's shoulder. "Mr. Zupan, I never meant to hurt anybody. I never meant to hurt Mark."
"It's not your fault, Chris," my dad said, hugging him tightly. "We know that you didn't do this intentionally."
He took a step back and faced Igoe, speaking to him man to man.
"But you share in the responsibility of what has happened to Mark," he said firmly. "You both made big mistakes, ones that will affect your lives forever. Mark might not make it through the night. And you're going to have to figure out how to deal with that."
"I know," Igoe said. "I'm sorry, Mr. Zupan. I"m so sorry."
Pg 94
The Emotions Of A Mother
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 06:02PM At three a.m., my mom was wide awake and restless. There was no one left to call or comfort, no doctors left to query, no insurance companies to contact or forms to fill out, no police to badger. She had been so busy that she had successfully avoided dealing with her grief, which snuck up behind her and knocked her to her knees with a sucker punch in the gut.
While she was down, her emotions climbed all over each other, fighting for her attention. She felt an uncontrollable anger at the unfairness of it all, and wanted to blame someone for what had happened.
How could Mark have been so foolish to drink so much and pass out in the back of a truck? Why was Chris driving drunk? He knows better than that. What the heck is wrong with these kids? How could they put us through this?
Then she felt guilty for thinking that and decided to point the finger at herself.
If I had been stricter, tougher, more vigilant, maybe I could have prevented this. If I had just been a better mother, I could have kept him out of harm's way. If I had just taught him a little more restraint, we wouldn't be in this situation.
Her sorrow then told her to question a higher power. My mom grew up in a Catholic household and her mother attended mass every day, but she isn't a religious person. But at this point she was willing to give anything a try.
How could you let this happen to my son? He never did anything to hurt anyone. He's really just a boy. How could you? Are you that cruel?
And then came the bargaining that any grief counselor will tell you is normal.
If you let my son survive I will become a better person. I've learned my lesson. Please, God, just give us all a second chance. Please, I'm begging you.
Pg 95-96
A Man Loses His Innocence
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:30PM A man loses his innocence when he realizes his own mortality. But it's at that exact moment that he understands the preciousness of his life and the people in it.
Pg 102
Injuries Are Like Giant Bombs
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:33PM Years later, Sharon would tell me that he felt he shared in the blame for what happened. I was shocked to hear this. Sharon had nothing to do with the accident. But the way he saw it, he was the captain and I was a freshman on the team. He should have looked after me better at the bar and made sure I got home safely. That's when I realized that injuries are like giant bombs. I happened to be at ground zero for this explosion, but I wasn't the only one who felt the blast and caught some shrapnel. It hurt everyone in the surrounding areas in varying degrees, depending on their proximity.
Pg 104
The Difference Between Hope and Denial
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:36PM Someone should do a study on the acoustics in hospitals. It's funny how you can hear only what you want to hear. I would take any positive comment from the doctors about my progress, no matter how small, and treat it like irrefutable evidence that I was going to be fine. At the same time, I would ignore anything they said that was remotely negative. When you're in a situation like this, it's tough to tell the difference between hope and denial.
Pg 108
Victory
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:38PM Sometimes the fight is all you get. Victory doesn't mean anything if failure isn't a possibility.
Pg 125
Doctors Are Not Gods. They're People Too And Can Be Questioned
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:40PM Before my accident, I had thought that doctors were these godlike beings who knew everything and could heal anyone. Now I knew that they were just mortals like the rest of us. They make mistakes. They have bad days. Some are smart and good at their jobs and deserve our respect and admiration. Others are total assholes. Sometimes you know more than your doctors do, and it's okay to question their authority, especially if you don't agree with them. It's good to ask questions and trust your own instincts. Press them when you don't understand, and don't take no for an answer. I can't tell you how many times over the years it has happened that doctors who are aware of my condition, and have purportedly read my medical records, have called me a paraplegic because I can still move my hands and arms.
I'm a quadriplegic, you jackass. Do your homework.
Pgs 149-150
If You Need Help, Ask
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:46PM The first two years are the make-or-break time for anyone with a spinal cord injury like mine. You either adjust to your new body or you don't.
It wasn't going to be easy, they told me. Your life has changed in ways that you are just starting to understand. Just take it one day at a time. If you need help, tell someone.
Pg 150
Being Pitied Doesn't Make You Pitiful
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 07:51PM In the hospital Nick and I had both seen each other at our worst, witnessed weaknesses that people usually hide, and shared an experience that few other human beings could understand. It felt like we had been on the front lines, and now I was being sent back stateside.
Nick and I had some good times together there. But he never recovered much function and grew increasingly depressed about his life. He wasn't able to find anything that made him happy. He believed that because people pitied him, he was pitiful. He dulled the pain by smoking weed and then got into cocaine. He fought his addictions, but a few years later, his father called to let me know that Nick had overdosed on drugs and died.
Breaking your neck can be a real bitch.
He was a good friend.
I still miss him.
Pg 151