Paralyzed in a racing accident nearly 25 years ago, Sam Schmidt has spent much of the last quarter century trying to prove to others that there is a way to have a meaningful life with a traumatic spinal cord injury.
That was the furthest thing from his mind when he crashed at Walt Disney World Speedway in the opening days of 2000. He suffered a C3 and C4 spinal cord injury, wasn’t breathing for almost four minutes, and had to be helicoptered to Orlando.
His wife was at home in Las Vegas with their children, and when she arrived in Florida, the prognosis was grim.
“We’re lucky he survived the night and if he survives the week, just find him a nursing home,” Schmidt told The Associated Press, detailing what the doctors relayed to his wife. “He’ll be on a ventilator the rest of his life.”
Schmidt’s injury at the time was compared to “the same as Christopher Reeve,” in that, like the ”Superman” actor, Schmidt was paralyzed from the neck down and needed a ventilator to breathe. Reeve reached out — he’d been working with doctors, pushing them, to find ways to help trauma patients create meaningful lives post accident — and Schmidt believes it was Reeve’s work that changed the trajectory of his life.
“There was no internet. My family was at the end of the hospital hallway on the payphones just calling, calling, calling, and all they were told was ‘We’ll teach him how to live with it, but that’s it,’” Schmidt told the AP.
It was Reeve’s doctor who demanded immediate action, and a surgeon for an NFL team operated immediately.
“It was either that or wear a halo for a year, and I wasn’t wearing a halo for a year,” Schmidt said. “So they did the surgery and got me off the ventilator in three weeks. It was Christopher Reeve, the first guy of notoriety, to say ‘No. Why? Tell me why we can’t fix this.’ And thank God he did because I never would have made it to a year.”
In the almost 25 years since, Schmidt has tried to give back and help others with similar injuries find some normalcy in their new lives. He first opened the Driven NeuroRecovery Center six years ago in Las Vegas, where Schmidt lives, and then set his sights on something bigger.
It came Tuesday with the ribbon-cutting on a not-for-profit Conquer Paralysis Now center in partnership with NeuroHope, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit, outpatient physical rehabilitation center.
The center, located in the former Five Seasons Sports Club, is a 114,000-square-foot building devoted…
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