'I always had hope'

Longtime BBCC instructor Vic Gilliland walking again after 2003 accident paralyzed him from chest down

MOSES LAKE — Like a tiny person greeting a line of friends, the thumb meets with the tip of the index finger, then the middle, then the ring and then the pinkie, and back again.

Vic Gilliland switches his gaze to his right hand, where the thumb does the greeting line trick again. Index, middle, ring, pinkie and back to index.

"A year ago, I couldn't do this," he said.

There were many things the former Big Bend Community College instructor could not do a year ago, much less a year and a half ago, since the day in August, 2003 when competing in a Richland time trial for his cycling club, he crashed into another rider and lost use of his body from the chest down.

Gilliland, a lifelong elite athlete, was riding fast on an open road, head down , helmet on, when the rider ahead of him suddenly stopped, causing Gilliland to crash head-on into him.

Gilliland suffered injuries to his left knee and right shoulder, as well as a severe contusion to his spinal cord near the fifth cervical vertebra, which almost completely paralyzed him.

"The helmet saved my life," he said, recalling that he never lost consciousness during or immediately after the 30-mile-an-hour crash.

He was transported to Kadalac Hospital in Richland, where he spent 19 days, eight of them in the intensive care unit. From there, it was on to St. Luke's rehabilitation center in Spokane until Oct. 2003. It was there that he begun the long road back to walking again.

"It was hard-core rehabilitation," Gilliland said of his wheelchair-bound days. Physical therapy for his legs, occupational therapy for his arms and recreational therapy, which included tossing things, holding things and, sometimes, feeding things.

"We would go to Riverside Park and feed the ducks," he remembered, smiling at the memory. "That was one of my first outings."

Gilliland had always been physically active, even running the Boston Marathon in 1980 and joining several running and cycling clubs. He either ran or rode his bicycle to work, as well as recreationally and competitively. Going from that to having his body be moved every three hours so he would not develop bed sores was not an easy transition.

"It was degrading," he said. "My incentive was to get as well as possible so that I did not have to get tossed around like a potato. I wanted to get out of (the) catheter, too."

Despite the grueling therapy and long days, Gilliland said that he had the goal of being independent again someday, only feeling despair one time, when a neurosurgeon told him that he would never be better than 80 percent of what he was before the accident.

"I am beyond that now, around 90 percent. I proved her wrong," he said, then reflected. "Maybe she did it as a ploy because she knew I was competitive."

From Spokane, it was on to Hearthstone assisted living facility in Moses Lake, where the therapy continued, and little things like turning on a light switch or brushing his teeth became milestones for him, until that day in May of 2004 when he walked again, less than a year after the accident.

"It was great," he said.

Although he now walks, drives, bikes, writes and even jogs a bit, his rehabilitation is still a work in progress. His gait is somewhat robotic, especially after he has been sitting down for awhile. After a few steps, the walk becomes much smoother, but never like it was before.

There are some scary moments, too, like that day two weeks ago when he lost consciousness for a couple of minutes. Although a CT scan revealed nothing wrong, the incident shook him up.

"I did not know who I was, where I was, what day it was," he said. "Two minutes later, I was lucid as can be."

Although the nerves on his spine are healing and growing at the rate of an inch per month, circulation to his extremities is still a problem, forcing him to move around on his chair or his driver's seat every 15 minutes or so, to get the blood flowing again.

A way to solve this problem was to buy a $450 cushion that would keep the circulation flowing. The steep price drops to zero if it is used by a patient in a wheelchair. Gilliland refuses to use either one, and prefers to stand up and squirm a bit every quarter hour when he sits.

For a man who has recouped most every function on his body, there are certain things he cannot do just yet. One of them is fishing.

The bruise, or contusion, on his spine left his autonomic nervous system (the one that shivers when the body is cold and sweats when the body is warm) not working very well. Gilliland does not have full control of his body's reactions to extreme temperatures, hence, fishing is out. At least when it's cold.

Work, however, is very much in. Newly retired, he's taken up working out and strengthening his once-dormant limbs with a workout most people would wince at, especially at 70.

His workout may include strength and endurance routines like walking laps in a pool, StairMaster sessions, weight lifting, as well as therapy sessions like giving his hands paraffin baths at 130 degrees Fahrenheit to improve flexibility. Still, he does not complain.

"I feel blessed when I get up and I can say 'here's another day to get better,'" he said.