Joe Graham was on a family vacation when he spotted a group of children diving into the hotel pool.
The father of two maneuvered his wheelchair over to strike up a friendly conversation with the kids and their parents, and caution them that small pools - like the one they were playing in - were not meant for diving.
The kids listened politely but resumed diving soon after Joe left, much to his dismay.
“I get it,” he said. “I was told to be careful a billion times as a kid, but I felt invincible. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way.”
Joe described his younger self as someone with an “adventurous streak” who loved BMX, skateboarding, snowboarding and was “really enthusiastic about life.”
“I was living so fast that everything I did was just to have fun,” he said. “It led me to do a lot of silly things without thinking about potential consequences. But one day, my ticket got punched.”
At a friend’s party in July of 2016, Joe, then 28, broke his neck and sustained a spinal cord injury after making a long-dive into an above-ground pool.
“I took four or five running steps and went in so far that I jammed my head on the other side of the pool wall. And then the lights went out.”
Joe woke up underwater. He remembers staring at the bright, sunny pool bottom and seeing his hands and feet floating around him.
“I tried to put my feet down, but I couldn’t. I tried moving my hands, but they weren’t working,” he recounted. “In my head, I was screaming for my friends to come and get me out. I was living inside a nightmare.”
Joe panicked, inhaled water and passed out a second time before his pregnant girlfriend Tonya and his cousin pulled him out and began to perform CPR.
At Saint Francis Hospital, Joe was placed on a ventilator and underwent emergency surgery for a high-level spinal cord injury. He woke up in the ICU wondering if he was in a dream until the memories of staring at the pool bottom flooded back.
“I was in a fog at Saint Francis,” he said, “but my family insisted on getting me into Gaylord Hospital’s spinal cord program. After six weeks in the ICU, I came to Gaylord, still on a vent and unable to move.”
Within weeks, Joe was weaned from the vent and began to lift his head and arms.
“Every day at Gaylord was a day of progress,” he said. “It’s hard to go from being able-bodied to not being able to move at all. But my therapists were very encouraging and supportive and always kept the mood light.”
Joe recalled one particularly challenging activity in occupational therapy: learning to put his shirt on by himself.
“It felt like such an impossible task that I was almost angry that they wanted me to do it. But everything they had me do - like learning to use a cuff to hold my toothbrush and fork – was to help me become as independent as possible.”
Joe didn’t let his injury stop him from doing what he most wanted: proposing to his girlfriend Tonya on bended knee. Determined to help him make his dream a reality, his creative team of therapists helped Joe get in position as a surprised and tearful Tonya said “yes.” Video footage of Joe’s proposal soon went viral and the story was picked up by national television.
Today, nearly seven years after his discharge, the father of two stays connected to Gaylord as a VIP (Voices for Injury Prevention) speaker with the hospital’s Think First program, a community outreach program that encourages youth to make smart decisions to reduce their risk of injury. Joe and other VIPs travel to K-12 schools across Connecticut to share their stories and lessons learned.
“It’s important for kids to understand the possible consequences of their actions,” he said.
“You don’t know what you don’t know … I didn’t know what quadriplegia was until my accident. I tell them to think before you dive in to water or jump into any risky situation in life. I dived into pools thousands of times in my lifetime. It only takes one wrong dive to change your life forever.”
“I’m on a mission,” he reflected. “I don’t want anyone to spend their life in a wheelchair. And If I can do something to prevent that, I will.”