Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/686754
t m c » p u l s e | j u n e 2 0 1 6 30 Q | What was your first clear memory after the accident? A | Probably my first very clear memory was when I finally got rolled outside. I remember the giant blue sky. It was really windy and cool at the time. That was pretty amazing. It was a big deal for me. As I was being transported into the plane to go to TIRR, I still couldn't talk or anything at this point. I was on a ventilator, still pretty messed up, so they took me to the plane and I flew and then I'm not sure which airport I flew into in Houston, and then from there they took me in an ambulance to TIRR. The whole thing was really scary because during the transport, I had an Ambu bag. It's basically a bag that hooks to the TRAC and the ventilator, and someone literally is breathing for you. They squeeze their hand so you can breathe. That was scary as hell and pretty weird. You're just staring at this person that's squishing this bag and saving my life. My life is in your hands, literally. Q | What was your mindset during rehabilitation at TIRR? A | I got off the vent and I was able to go to more stuff at the gym and start doing more conventional rehab. I had Dr. Kenneth Parsons and he was great. It was a really good experience for a really bad time and a really bad situation. I was 25 then, so I was pretty pissed off the whole time. At this age now, 42, you realize that these people are coming to you to help at the hardest time in your life. I can see that now, but at the time, I don't know that I would have said that. Now I have a better understanding of things. Q | How did your accident aect your career at GSD&M? A | I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the company and group of people. They were really incredible—they always stood by my side, helped me, and continued to work with me in terms of my availability and what I can realistically do on any given day. I was at TIRR when one of the partners at GSD&M called my mom and said, 'Look, about Jared. Don't worry about the job. We'll figure it out and we'll figure out how he'll continue to work. Don't worry about where he's going to live and how that's going to work because we're going to build him a house.' They built a studio-type house for me on my parents' property, so I was able to stay and work there. My parents took care of me after I got home from TIRR and my father continues to help me today. After I got married and had kids, we just kept adding onto the house and kept expanding. Q | How is your life now dierent from before you had the accident? A | I was very active before the acci- dent. I ran, lifted weights, played team sports all my life and continued on the tennis team where I worked here in Austin. Tennis, soccer, camping and hiking, that sort of stuff. I think going from that pretty high activity level to the prospect of zero activity or the idea of not being able to do anything like that was pretty tough. It was also the fear of not knowing. I was doing well as far as my career went and things were really just starting to take off in some respects when I had my accident. It was going from career minded, driven, ambitious to thinking all that's gone and everything is gone. I'm going to have to end up depending on people for the rest of my life on a very patient level, not just the normal 'we all need stuff' kind of stuff. Literally, to brush my teeth or get something to eat. I think that was probably the toughest thing. I think the mental part was the toughest. Q | At what point did you have that 'aha' moment when you realized you could still have a good life? A | It's a gradual process. I think it sounds better if you have that moment. It would be nice to think I had that epiphany but the reality is it's still hard today. I still deal with a lot of the same issues today that I think my advice to anyone who's dealing with something like this is stay busy, try to do things that occupy your mind. That was one of the big things my grandmother told me when I was there—just keep your mind active and don't give up. That was kind of the mantra there at TIRR. The beneficial slogan was to never give up, and that's the same today. At the end of the day, when I've gone to visit people in the hospital and they're in similar situations, that's what I leave them with: 'You know how fast your life changed, but I don't know why it couldn't change back or change in a positive way just as quickly.' You're always kind of looking behind the bend or over the hill to figure out what's going to happen next, but you just don't know. I just try to stay positive and just keep going, keep breathing. Sometimes it's one minute at a time, sometimes it's an hour, some- times it's a day, sometimes it's a month. You just focus on what you can take in at that moment. Q | What inspired your passion for art? How does it fit into your life now? A | I think there was still something missing or lacking in my life. I had always been into art as a little kid. I was drawing in elementary and middle school. I liked art and would be a little involved, but I really just lacked the focus and I didn't see it necessarily as a career. I think that's how I found peace with being a copywriter. I was able to be creative, have a career and con- tinue that, so once I started painting and my mom told me about what the Lichtenstein Mouth and Foot Painting Artists organization was doing, I was like, 'Sure, what the hell, I'll give it a try.' Right at first it was very basic. It was literally just trying to figure out how to do things. I started off doing water- color on paper and just drawing, being frustrated, a little maddening and just keep going from there, but I ultimately loved it. It was the thing that I got to do to make something. The work I did at the agency was cool, but it was just that there were a lot of people involved. Let's say you make a 30-second television spot. It's not just you and one other person. You're talking about hundreds of people being involved. I loved the fact that when it came to painting, when it came to the artwork in that sense, it was sink or swim for me. This painting either will be great or not or it's going to be what it is, but it's going to be because I did it or I achieved something or I failed. I like that part of it. There was an independence that painting gave me. To some degree, I still have a lot of people who help me and I have to, especially now that I'm dealing with bigger canvases. Being involved with painting, starting to paint, and getting any kind of attention or recognition for it was basically to build a platform to talk about spinal cord injury and the need for it to be solved. How do we fix this? If we can send a person to the moon, we can certainly cure paralysis. I think my advice to anyone who's dealing with something like this is stay busy, try to do things that occupy your mind.