Nurse transforms her life and calls her wheelchair "a gift"

 

Deborah Sherman wrote this piece about Dr. Terry Chase. 

"One moment, 32-year-old Terry Chase was leaning over the handlebars of her road bike feeling the sun and wind caress her face while her lungs and legs pumped and burned along a 10-mile route in Grand Junction. The next moment, she was airborne."

"She landed on the hot hood of a Lincoln Continental, sprawled across the windshield. It kept going. Chase heard crunching as the car demolished her bike. The driver swerved hard and she rolled off, slamming into the pavement. As he sped away, strangers ran over to help. She couldn’t move. Chase cried, “Where are my legs?” Her back was broken."

In one breath, Chase had gone from an athlete to half paralyzed as her spine shattered leaving her in a wheelchair for life. But today, after living with a disability for 35 years, Chase calls that wheelchair “a gift”.

“The accident knocked the crap out of me or perhaps what was holding me back,” wrote Terry Chase, ND, MA, RN, CEIP-ED, in her book Spoke by Spoke: How a Broken Back and a Broken Bike Led to a Wholehearted Life.

“It turns out the injury that seemed to take away so much actually gave me more and allowed me to live a fuller, expansive life. It’s ironic that after getting hit by that car…and being left half-paralyzed, I finally learned to take the first step toward creating my life.”

Please read more about Dr. Chase at https://news.cuanschutz.edu/nursing/former-cu-nursing-grad-transforms-life-after-near-fatal-cycling-accident-finds-new-reason-to-live-and-serve and view this YouTube video CU College of Nursing: Alumna Terry Chase, ND, MA, RN, CEIP-Ed - YouTube

Cheers!

Donna