Joe Russell’s Story: Facing fear in the darkness of a hospital room
It was August of 1985 when my brother Joe and I sat down to rewrite our wrestling goals. We had big plans. We believed that once the goals were written and spoken aloud the work must begin, so we met up with a coach and some teammates and began training.
We started with a six-mile run, pushing each other with each step, and challenging the other’s resolve. After our run, we stopped by the house to pick up our wrestling shoes on the way to practice. We lived only two blocks from the high school. Our teammate had just bought a brand new Interceptor 500 motorcycle, the first of the modern crotch rockets and regarded as one of the finest handling motorcycles of the 1980s. The bike could accelerate to high speeds quickly.
Joe jumped on the back of the bike for a quick two-block ride to the wrestling room. I hopped in the car with our assistant coach as we chased the motorcycle down the road. After only two blocks, my brother and teammate were in a serious motorcycle accident. As I watched the bike in front of me, the world seemed as if it moved in slow motion. Since the ride was only two blocks, Joe did not take time to put on a helmet. As the bike flipped, Joe’s head met with the foot peg. Then Joe reversed direction and rolled with the bike. I jumped out of the car and ran to a gas station nearby. Without permission, I grabbed their phone and dialed 9-1-1. When I ran back, our assistant coach stood in shock. I saw Joe lying on top of the motorcycle in a pool of blood. While we waited for the ambulance, I took my shirt off and wrapped it around Joe’s head trying to stop the bleeding. Joe’s brain was rapidly swelling and pushing through the hole left in his head from the foot peg. Joe opened his big blue eyes and looked up at me. He did not say anything. I will never forget the way he looked at me. As I held him in my arms, I kept repeating, “Joe, it is going to be OK. It is going to be OK.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself.
When the ambulance arrived, they tried to move him and he began to reach to grab at his head; I could see fear and confusion in his eyes. As I talked to Joe, he seemed to calm down enough for the medics to do what they needed to get him in the ambulance. As soon as the ambulance left the parking lot, my whole body, spirit, and soul experienced an overload. I melted on the pavement. I could hear the sirens grow faint as they sped off to the hospital. My clothes clung to my body as Joe’s blood had soaked through. I was drenched in his blood. I knelt there for what seemed like an eternity.
When my parents and I arrived at the hospital, Joe was in surgery. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctors came out with good news. Joe was still alive! But we weren’t prepared for what they said next. Joe had suffered a compound skull fracture with severe lacerations to his brain, and they estimated he lost a third of his brain matter on the pavement. They told us that there were at least seven medical reasons why Joe should have died instantly. The doctors said, “Joe is alive, but he will never walk, talk, eat or drink, or do anything normal again for the rest of his life. He will probably spend the rest of his life in a coma. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was not right! Joe and I had plans together, big plans. There was never a time when I have ever felt the amount of confusion and emotion that I felt on that day in the hospital.
Days later, Joe lay in the intensive care unit as a nurse was performing her normal duties around his bed. Joe looked up at the nurse and whispered, “I’m cold.” Startled, she began to cry. She knew Joe wasn’t supposed to talk. She ran from the room and found us. We had experienced a miracle. After we finally settled down, Joe exclaimed, “I’m hungry!” The doctor tried to tell him that because of the accident, the left side of his body was completely paralyzed. They told him that he probably would not have use of his throat muscles and would have to be fed by machine. Joe had spent an entire year dieting to make weight for wrestling. He looked up at the doctor and said, “Sir, I’m a wrestler. I will never forget how to eat!” Smiling, the doctor gave him a glass of water and told him that if he could drink it, they would let him eat something. Joe gulped down the glass of water and I ran to McDonald’s for a Big Mac, fries, and a coke, and smuggled them into the hospital for Joe.
Joe was alive, but the season ahead would not be easy. The dreams and goals we had written down just days before no longer applied. Our dream of being champions together seemed impossible. Joe experienced many emotions as he lay in the hospital bed day after day, night after night, wondering why he was there. The accident was not his fault. It didn’t seem fair. He had so much potential. But now, he couldn’t even help himself. It seemed as if all of his plans and dreams were crashing down around him. Joe recalls one night as he lay in the hospital bed. In the accident, he burned his right forearm on the exhaust pipe of the motorcycle. The thick scab was slowly healing, but it began to itch. He wanted desperately to scratch it, but his left side was paralyzed. He tried everything he could think of. He was too proud to call in the nurse. He looked down at his left arm and yell, “Go! Move!” But his arm just lay there. He began to cry. He was beginning to feel sorry for himself. He knew he couldn’t go on much longer.
In that moment, Joe turned his tears outward and cried, “God, I can’t do this! This is too much for me!” Dad had always pointed us to Jesus as the Ultimate Coach for life. As Joe called out to Jesus, the tears flowed and he sensed God’s presence. In the middle of his dark, lonely room, God brought peace and comfort to his wounded soul. From that night forward, Joe found hope and purpose in the midst of the pain and disappointment. He realized that he could not handle the effects of the accident on his own, but with God as his Coach, he could do anything.
The next morning Joe’s fingers began to move. It took everything within him to make one finger move. But Joe was determined to win. Eventually all of his fingers began to move again, followed by his arm and then his shoulder. It wasn’t long before Joe was learning to walk again.
All day long, Joe walked the hallways of the hospital. He found other patients who were learning to walk again and challenged them to races. Joe was setting new goals and working to achieve them in clear, measurable ways.
On the day Joe was released from the rehab center, he insisted on being taken to the school. Joe got out of the car and stumbled onto the track. He wanted to see how fast he could run a mile. An average time to run a mile is between six and eight minutes. Joe finished his first mile in a little over twenty-seven minutes. When he finished, his knees and elbows were bleeding because every three or four steps he fell flat on his face. But every time he fell he got right back up.
The next day Joe was back on the track, determined to run a little bit better and a little bit faster. One day during a follow-up appointment with the doctors, Joe said, “I want to wrestle again!” They said, “No!” They explained, “Joe, you had a compound skull fracture with severe lacerations of the brain. You need to be happy that you are alive. Wrestling is out of the question.” Joe replied, “No, I want to wrestle again. I know I can do it.” The doctor said he would not even discuss Joe’s wrestling career until he could change the rhythm of his walk. This would require learning to crawl all over again. For hours every day after that, Joe got down on his hands and knees and crawled like a baby. He would do army crawls on his belly until it was raw, red, and blistered. Joe kept his goal in front of him. He would wrestle again. He would show those doctors; he would find his way back to the mat.
Joe Russell wrestled at the University Minnesota from 1988-92. In his senior season, he served as team captain, was named to the Academic All-Big Ten team and was the winner of the team’s Dean Fraser Most Courageous Wrestler award.
In June of 2007, Russell was presented with the Medal of Courage from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. 2014 Joe Russell was named by USA Wrestling as the Greco Roman Coach of the Year.
Today, Joe Russell is the Head Wrestling Coach at George Mason University.
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
