19 Apr Growing Pains 1: Chronicles Of A Young Woman Coping With Paralysis

By Beth Livingston

In 1989, I had arrived. I had recently completed my undergraduate studies at Parsons School of Design in New York City and had moved across the country to start a new adventure. My husband George and I were married 3 years earlier. We were committed to living in the Rocky Mountains, and Bozeman, Montana, was our chosen destination.

After settling into town, finding a place to live, and securing employment, life began to settle into normalcy. We made a few new friends, got to know our neighbors, and began making our rented turn-of-the-century farmhouse comfortable.

Things were going my way, going just as I had scripted them. Yet, I had an uneasy feeling that there was something dreadful looming on the horizon. Something that I could not elicit in any rational fashion, yet a palpable feeling that my unfettered “salad days” were numbered.

On August 7 that summer, I awoke from a frightening dream. My father was mountain climbing in Switzerland at the time, and I dreamed that he fell, landed on his back and was seriously injured. Concerned, I phoned my mother to see if she had any word from my father and brother. “A few days ago,” she assured me, “and they were fine. If anything had happened, I’m sure we would know immediately.”

My mother and I spoke of current events and I ended the conversation saying I would phone again soon. I had a few errands in town to do, I said, and had to run.

I loaded my two dogs into the back of my Isuzu Trooper, jumped in and started heading down the driveway. Turning onto the road in front of my house I began to buckle up. Struggling to engage my seatbelt I took my foot off the gas pedal and looked down to find the other end of the seatbelt. In doing so, I inadvertently began drifting into the irrigation ditch on the side of the road. I felt a dip, and as I looked up, I was headed down a steep embankment. My instincts told me to turn the wheel and drive out of the ditch. Within seconds of my decision to do so, my life, and that of those whom I loved dearly, would be changed forever.

My car flipped one and a half times. As I was being ejected from the front windshield, I broke my back on the steering wheel. The car came to rest on it’s side, and I was lying next to it’s underbelly, my feet practically touching the front wheels, still rolling. The miracle was that the car didn’t roll right over me. I knew immediately that I was paralyzed, although, I had no grasp of what that really meant. I had no concept that it would be forever, that I would not go back to my job as a waitress, and that I would no longer stand and walk with out adaptive technology. I had no way of grasping the gravity of my situation nor that I was entering into the greatest challenge of my life.

I was injured almost 17 years ago, when I was 24 years old. Paralysis has followed me through the birth of three beautiful children, and the death of one. It has become a second skin, and a ball and chain. I have struggled to join mainstream America in the pursuit of motherhood, largely, with no road map. I’ve had to teach myself how to care for an infant from a chair, how to set boundaries for toddlers when you can’t chase them down and how to keep moving forward through grief, frustration, and a sense of isolation, finding joy at the end. I have struggled as a young woman to define how I see myself as attractive and desirable in a world filled with images of women impossible to duplicate without an airbrush and cosmetic surgery. I have learned to be resourceful, and to be self-reliant. I continue to learn acceptance for being in a chair.

It is an ongoing process.

Beth Livingston, who is currently training in Nordic skiing for the 2006 Paralympics in Torino, Italy, is the mother of two children. She lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Meet Our Members

Beth Livingston of Bozeman, Montana, has been a United Spinal member since May 2005. She is mother of son Parker, 14, and daughter Lila, 9.

Beth is employed by Home Depot in the Olympic Job Opportunities Program. She is also an Ambassador for Patagonia, the outdoor clothing retailer, where she provides product testing and development.

Beth teaches skiing to other individuals with disabilities through her local disabled outdoor recreation center, EagleMount (www.eaglemount.org or 406-586-1781). She competed in the 2002 Paralympic Games in Salt Lake in Nordic skiing and is currently training to compete in the 2006 Paralympic Games in Torino, Italy.

“I have enjoyed being a member of United Spinal and receiving the monthly magazine,” she says. “It has given me a renewed interest in advocacy by keeping me abreast of current issues and legislation relating to SCI.” Beth is also author of a new column for Action, “Growing Pains.”