Christopher Reeve, Super Man
After portraying “Superman” in four consecutive movies, actor Christopher Reeve found his on-screen persona hard to shake. Clad in trademark blue and red, Reeve high-jumped tall buildings, saved the world and became an icon of popular culture. Yet for many people, especially children, any distinction between superhero and the actor was difficult.
“I was called to go everywhere as a kind of symbol,” he says. “To Sloan-Kettering [hospital] to see terminally ill children, to Make a Wish Foundation, where the kid’s last request is to meet me, you know, even though I’m not Superman. . . . It was heart-rending. But I would always have to admit to that secret sigh of relief as you close the door and go back to your own life.” Now, Reeve adds, ”I’m on the other side of the door. And I have to stay in the room, and be the one with the problem.”
Reeve’s life changed course in May 1995, at the third jump of a cross-country equestrian event, in Culpeper, Virginia. Onlookers say Reeve galloped his thoroughbred confidently toward the metre-high jump. At the last moment his horse balked. Reeve continued with the momentum and was thrown over the horse’s neck, hitting the fence and landing forehead-first on the ground.
Reeve speculated later if his hands hadn’t tangled in the bridle and he had been free to break his fall, a couple of sprained wrists may have been the extent of the damage. Instead, the force of his 100-kilogram body hitting the ground fractured his first and second cervical vertebrae, between the brain stem and the neck.
“This Isn’t Worth It”
Immediately after the accident, Dana Morosini, Reeve’s wife, was told her husband had only a 50 per cent chance of survival. Neurosurgeon Dr John Jane performed an intricate operation in which he used fine wire and bone from Reeve’s hip to reconnect the C1 and C2 vertebrae to the skull, literally reattaching Reeve’s head to his body.
Doctors diagnosed him as a “C1 incomplete”—paralysed from the neck down unable, initially, to breathe without a respirator, but with the long-term possibility of recovering use of his shoulders and arms.
As doctors worked to stabilise him and minimise further nerve damage, Reeve began fighting the battle on another front. “When they told me what my condition was, I felt that I was no longer a human being,” he says. “Then Dana came into my room and knelt down to the level of my bed. We made eye contact. I said, ‘Maybe this isn’t worth it. Maybe I should just check out.’ And she was crying, and she said, ‘But you’re still you, and I love you.’ And that saved my life.”
After spending a month in intensive care, Reeve was moved to a New Jersey hospital to start the process of rehabilitation. He began his time there, he says, “with a kind of arrogance and denial” mixed with fear. Being showered for the first time made Reeve realise his helplessness. “I seemed so vulnerable, like going on this huge, terrifying adventure.”
Christopher Reeve in his famous acting
role as Superman from 1978 to1987
Fighting Off Discouragement
A nurse convinced Reeve to read a book about spinal-cord injuries. From this he was forced to confront the extent of his disability. Since then, he says, he has tried to take responsibility for his progress—to set goals and work to achieve them.
One of the first was to extend the time he could breathe on his own without a ventilator. Ten unaided breaths exhausted him. Improvement has been slow, but now he can breathe by himself for hours at a time.
A “sip-and-puff” wheelchair gives Reeve mobility. He can vary his direction and speed by either sipping or blowing air, using different levels of force, into a plastic straw. Apart from breathing and operating his chair, he requires help for everything else.
Dependence on others is anathema to Reeve who, before his accident, was an avid skier, ice-skater and sailor, and he has developed something of an apology-reflex.
Discouragement is an ongoing challenge. “You’re sitting here fighting depression. You’re in shock,” he says. “You look out the window and you can’t believe where you are. And the thought that keeps going through your mind is, ‘This can’t be my life. There’s been a mistake.’”
Catching a Vision
Reeve now seems to have moved beyond asking “why?” to “what now?” Since coming home to his ranch in rural West Virginia, Reeve has had little time for introspection. He has taken on a number of different projects aimed at raising public awareness of the issues facing paralysed people.
He began his crusade with insurance companies who have made it an industry norm to cap the benefits paid to spinal-cord injury victims. While Reeve is well able to afford the $US400,000 a year for proper ongoing medical treatment, most victims find their compensation fund running dry in under three years. Reeve lobbied members of the US Congress and lent his support to a proposed health bill that bars this type of insurance capping.
Spinal-cord research, however, is the field that has captured Reeve’s attention. Working with the University of California, he founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center. It studies the treatment of spinal-cord injuries with the goal of one day discovering a cure. Although scientists have believed that loss of neurologic function in these cases is permanent, recent research suggests that regeneration of the spinal cord may be possible in the future.
The work done at this centre has potential spin-off benefits for other medical riddles, such as dementia, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s.
Reasons to Live
Over the past two years Reeve has been edging slowly and hesitantly back into the public spotlight. He was an emcee of the Paralympics in Atlanta, USA; he made a nonpartisan speech at a national political convention; he has addressed the US Congress on a number of occasions. But the process has often been painful. Reeve is acutely aware that his body can let him down at a crucial moment. Whole-body spasms can occur with no warning and he must simply endure them until they subside.
While waiting in the wings to appear in a live broadcast of the 1996 Academy Awards, Reeve was struck by a spasm that abated only seconds before he was due to go on stage. Another time he had difficulty speaking before a Congressional committee because of a problem with his tracheostomy, a tube that travels from an opening in his lower neck to the ventilator attached to his chair. Recalling the event, he says, “I, of course, went off into a corner and beat myself up about having blown my big moment.”
Time magazine writer Roger Rosenblatt, who is assisting with Reeve’s autobiography, says that Reeve approaches everything—acting, relationships, problems—with intense single-mindedness and determination. Reeve is detail- and task-orientated, Rosenblatt says, and for this reason is inclined to be very hard on himself when he fails. The flip side is that Reeve refuses to see his paralysis as dead-end. He’s determined to achieve the most he can within his physical limitations, while at the same time striving to overcome those barriers.
Reeve can point out things he has gained from his ordeal. He appreciates his family and friends more and says that because his marriage was good before the accident, calamity has strengthened, rather than weakened the bond he has with his wife.
Simple things have also taken on a special resonance. He can absorb the beauty and peace of the rural view from his window for hours. Though, he says, “These are things that I thought I would learn to do when I was 75, not 43!”
Gain From Pain
Reeve also sees human compassion close up on a daily basis.
“If all the people who are around me were mad at me or in a lousy mood or whatever, and they went away, there’d be nothing I could do about it,” he says. “But their compassion, their involvement, causes them to put a fork in my mouth and I take a bite of food. Or turn me in bed so I don’t get a sore. . . . Basically it comes down to goodwill.”
In a recent television interview, Reeve was asked whether he had ever thought, Why me?
“Yes,” he replied, “But I also ask, ‘Why not me?’”
As Superman, Reeve inspired people by being invincible. As a quadriplegic he is demonstrating that you don’t need physical strength to have extraordinary courage.
“In the first few days [after the accident] I kept thinking, I’ve ruined my life. All that self-pity comes in the beginning. And it does recur. But what you begin to say to yourself—instead of ‘What life do I have?’—is, ‘What life can I build?’
“And the answer, surprisingly, is, ‘More than you think!’”
Sources: Time (USA), People and Associated Press.
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Christopher Reeve passed away on October 10, 2004 from heart failure. He was 52 years old. Christopher was a hero to many people, yet he was most moved by others, stating, "I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles." He adamantly believed that nothing was impossible and worked tirelessly to find a cure for paralysis.
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This is an extract from June 1997
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