Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/686754
t m c » p u l s e | j u n e 2 0 1 6 29 SPOTLIGHT IN APRIL OF 2000, JARED DUNTEN DOVE INTO THE RIO GRANDE WHILE ON A CAMPING TRIP WITH A FRIEND. SIXTEEN YEARS LATER, HE OPENS UP ABOUT THAT DAY, HIS HOPES FOR CURING PARALYSIS, AND HOW NEVER GIVING UP HAS HELPED HIM CREATE A LIFE NO ONE COULD HAVE IMAGINED. Q | Tell us about your background. A | It was kind of unconventional. My parents grew up in the Houston area, and in 1977 or 1978, they moved to Lake Travis, just outside of Austin. My dad used to work for Houston Lighting and Power and my mom worked for NASA as a librarian. They told the family that we were going to move to Lake Travis and start a cactus nursery. As you can imagine, everyone was like, 'What?' They really loved going up to the desert. They really appreciated the landscape and loved the way the plants looked, so it became a hobby […] and they wanted to do that full time. They got to the point where they were looking at the jobs they had and [real- ized], 'This is not what we're passionate about. It's not who we are and not what we want to do.' They packed me up and the three of us headed west. They started a shop in Bee Caves, which is about 15 minutes from where I live now, and have run a cactus and succulent nursery for 30 to 35 years. I grew up just outside of Austin and went to school in Lake Travis until ninth grade. After ninth grade, I went to St. Michaels and had a great time. After I graduated from St. Michaels, I went to Texas A&M and was in the Corps for about three semesters, but it just wasn't for me, so I got out and joined a frater- nity. Both experiences were great and I met a lot of wonderful people. Over the summer I interned with GSD&M right after my freshman year in college on the account services side, but realized that wasn't what I wanted to do long term. As I changed my major from business to English and I got more interested in writing, I was able to get another internship on the creative side at GSD&M. I worked my way up and was hired as a writer for GSD&M, which is what I still do today. Q | How has your "unconventional" upbringing shaped who you are today? A | We would go on a lot of buying trips out to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California, different areas in Texas and out west. That was kind of different and a little strange. During that time, I was exposed to a lot of nature. We did a lot of camping, went on really beautiful road trips and spent time outdoors. I developed a deep and wonderful appreciation for nature—the natural beauty and the severity of it. Q | Can you talk about how you sustained your injury? A | A buddy and I were on a camping trip in the Chisos Mountains in the left section out in Big Bend, where we had been camping for a couple of days. The plan was to go over into Mexico there in Bosques, and we were going to stay the night and get up to go to Mass the next morning. Before we had done that, we pop all our gear and stuff off and we're having enchiladas and we headed down to the hot springs there right next to the Rio Grande. While I was doing that, I grabbed a bar of soap and dove into an area that I thought was deep, but it was a bad move on my part because I didn't check before. There's all kinds of little pools and stuff in the Rio Grande. I hit a sand bar and don't really remember much after that. I was in the river for a couple of hours, but thankfully my buddy saw me dive in and fished me out after I didn't come up for a while. He basically stood in the river and held me above water while he was scream- ing for help. Luckily, while we were headed down to the Rio Grande, we met some other campers there at the place we were staying and they heard him screaming for help. I was in the river for a couple of hours though until, finally, they came and he told them what was going on. I don't remember any of this really. It's just kind of stories I've been told. The two girls went to the park ranger, who then got a boat and came down the Rio, got me, took me on a stretcher and transported me from there to an ambulance to Alpine. The doctors at Alpine weren't going to be able to do anything there because, at that point, I was paralyzed. I was taken in an ambulance to Lubbock, where they did the decompression on my spinal cord at C4 and C5, where I had my injury. I was in an ICU there in Lubbock for about a month and a half. Q | What happened then? A | During that time, I developed a really bad case of pneumonia because I had taken so much of the water and, as they were trying to treat my lungs, I was put on a stryker bed. They used a special bed that you swing back and forth to keep the fluids moving in your lungs so it doesn't settle in and doesn't make the pneumonia worse. At that point, because this bed shifts back and forth, I developed a pressure sore that is like an ulcer in the lower part of my back. Now I have this wound and I've got pneumonia and on a ventilator. The doctors did a lot of suction of my lungs and that was really painful. That's really what I remember the most. The doctor who was there said they had never seen anything like this or quite this bad because I had taken in so much of the dirty water and that kind of stuff. Throughout this, I was pretty out of it. I don't really remember a lot and what I do remember is pretty dreamy. Real dream-like memory of that whole expe- rience, but maybe dream-like is not the right description because it was pretty terrible. The doctors had talked about paralysis, but I had no idea about paralysis and spinal cord injury. I knew nothing—I was naïve: I thought I'd be going to rehab, work really hard for six months, and it'd be like what you see in movies, where I'd get on parallel bars, learn how to walk again and all that kind of stuff. Thought that was really what it was going to be like. The thing was, I was in the ICU for so long, just up and down, while the doctors were trying to keep my fever down. I think there was some concern that, if I stayed there, I may not make it. In fact, one of the nurses had told my parents that it was very important that they get me out of there because it wasn't going well. I will paint myself out of a wheelchair. That was literally how I thought this would work.