Changing Suffering into Happiness: Andrew Vahldieck, USA

July-August 1999

By Andrew Vahldieck

Andrew Vahldieck became a quadriplegic thirty years ago, at the age of 17, in a swimming accident in Wisconsin, USA. He lives in Santa Cruz with his partner.

What I remember best is that it was such a bloody hot day that not only was there the usual cleanup swim call after work late in the afternoon on any given day, but there was a second cool-off swim call after dinner in the evening. The camp was situated on a beautiful private rural lake in northern Wisconsin surrounded by pines and a tamarack bog and a swamp. I had been going down a waterslide that was part of the sauna bath we had built the year before for cleaning up and refreshing on rainy or stormy days when it wasn’t safe to swim in the lake.

The slide was a primitive affair that was built into the side of the hill overlooking the lake, and had no guardrails, no curvature of the lip at the bottom – just an abrupt cutoff at the end. The slide was kept lubricated, the surface being metal sheet, by water from the lake that was pumped uphill by a surplus army water pump.

I remember someone had been tampering with the pump, probably just curious about its mechanisms. Later on I would realize they had turned the water off going down over the slide. When I came up to the top of the slide, the second time around, the water had been turned back on and flowed again, but in the middle of the slide it was still dry. The sun was so hot that what water had been on the slide had evaporated. I went flying down the slide with the water that was gushing out over the top of the slide, but when I hit the dry spot in the middle of the slide, the friction that resulted – I was sitting on my butt and my feet – caused me to lose my balance and I began to fall off the side of the slide. I made a split-second decision not to go in that direction because there boulders all around below, and I certainly didn’t want to sustain a broken bone because I wouldn’t be able to finish the rest of the course. I loved hard work and the outdoor life in northern Wisconsin.

I threw all my weight back in the direction of the slide and was able to bring myself back down onto the slide somehow, an extended my arms in the classic diver’s stance. Apparently my arms weren’t extended far enough out, and I hit the bottom of the lake very hard. The pain was extraordinary and unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I immediately understood that the physical results would be very serious. What astonished me was [that] it was if I had entered another dimension. I never lost consciousness. I was cognizant the whole time.

Like others who have had near-death experiences, I felt as though I was in a dark place – not necessarily a tunnel, but a dark space on a track, racing along at high speed. I believed that I was dead because I had no sensation, no sensory awareness, no pain – except for an odd, remote buzzing in the back of my neck, which I imagined was my neck area. My entire orientation in space had changed: I had no sense of my body. It was as if I was an ethereal being – I mean, now I have the vocabulary to say this; at that time I was 17, four weeks out of high school. Now I realize I had gone from feeling very solid and physical (I was 6 feet tall, 175 pounds, solid muscle) and all of a sudden I’m flying through space after an extraordinarily intense jolt. There was only one answer to explain this experience that I’d never had before, and that was that I’d really done it this time – I was dead. Eventually I coasted to a place of almost suspended animation. I felt very aware, I was active mentally, and still astonished by the lack of any sight or sound, just the darkness all around. I asked myself, “Where’s the devil? Where’s God? Where is St. Peter, or at least some angels?” Nobody showed, so I figured I was just hanging out here in a dark void. There was some level of anxiety, but it wasn’t overwhelming – it was more in the order of taking it in, and wondering what my options were going to be.

After what seemed like several minutes, but what in reality was a few seconds, I saw a strange light out in space in front of me, appearing vertically. At first I thought it was some kind of apparition. I watched it keenly, and what I came to understand what I was seeing was the bottom of the lake, that I was under water and my eyes were open. It wasn’t as if my eyes were re-opening after being closed, but it was as if a dark curtain had de-materialized, and now I was looking at the bottom of the lake. I could see branches and leaves that had fallen from above, and I realized that I had to have more oxygen, and my brain told my body to move. There was no movement, no response – none whatsoever. This was a considerable surprise!

It was momentarily terrifying, but I tried to keep my wits about me and I hoped someone would grab me before I ran out of oxygen. After what seemed like a long time, I felt myself somehow being moved up and down, and saw someone pulling me up towards the air. They lifted me up into the air and my head flopped over. Again the pain reasserted itself, and I weakly, but as loudly as possible yelled, “Please – help! I can’t move.” The advisors on the pier started yelling to put me on my back. They rolled me onto the sand on the shore.

In 1970, that far north in Wisconsin, we were about 40 miles away from the nearest hospital. They called the local fire department, which arrived with its pink-paint-covered hearse that they had adapted for local fire department paramedic needs. Several guys on either side carefully slid towels under me and walked up the steps together to place me on a stretcher. Every time they moved me the pain was extraordinary. Most of the people in the camp had run down to the lake and were at the top of the hill looking down at me. Since I was on my back I could see them, and at that age, when you’re 17 years old and a young man, you don’t want to appear weak in the eyes of your peers.

The pain was so strong, radiating out from my neck. I had been in bicycle accidents and hockey fights; I’d been hit with sticks and pucks; I had torn cartilage and ligaments, I had broken bones. I’d been injured in so many ways I was considered accident-prone by my family. I had never experienced any pain approaching this. It’s interesting because not everyone who has a spinal cord injury experiences that kind of pain – some people feel almost nothing. My status physically, the pain at that point, was quite challenging emotionally.

On the road to the hospital, every pothole that we hit made my neck move, the broken or fractured vertebrae would grind against the spinal cord and caused considerable pain. After we got onto smoother asphalt, I asked for oxygen and for some reason I didn’t get it. Again I felt as though I might die then and there.

When they got me to the hospital, they opened up the ambulance and pulled me out. As soon as they set me down on the tarmac, I passed out from the pain. As soon as I woke up I passed out again, every 15 to 20 seconds as they moved me through the emergency rooms. They didn’t know what to do with me at first, because the hospital was being mainly staffed by residents from the University of Wisconsin who were in their first year or so of medical practice. Very nervously they explained to me they didn’t know what to do with me. They were working hard with other hospitals to come up with some suggestions; should they fly me to another hospital?

What came to pass was one of the medical directors that the inexperienced doctors contacted recalled that a distinguished gentleman had stopped by his office at the hospital on the way to his vacation home, which was on an island in one of the nearby lakes. He happened to be a doctor from Chicago – in fact, one of the experts at that time in the area of emergency traumatic care, Dr. Farrington from a rehab institute in Chicago, I think. Dr. Farrington had left his card and said if anything came up that they couldn’t handle, he would do his best to respond.

They called him, and he came with a set of suitcases and tools that looked to be right out of the Sears-Roebuck tool catalogue. He was very frank and direct with me, and told me that my situation was rather grave. He said he would have to stabilize fractured vertebrae in my upper neck, cervical 4, 5 and 6. I was on oxygen at this point, and the nurses had begun giving me regular shots of morphine.

He proceeded to drill a set of holes in my skull which was, to say the least, extremely unpleasant – no anesthesia. They did this so they could implant what they called in those days tongs, which look a bit like precision forceps, with a screw bolt attachment at the other end. These tongs were screwed literally into my skull – they had to shave off a landing strip on the top of my head. The tongs themselves were really the coupling for a set of weights that hung from a supported structure that was placed behind me. The weights essentially lifted the pressure of my head off my neck, and in so doing, allowed for what the doctor called decompression of the bone against the actual spinal cord. This was extremely painful and caused me to go into shock.

I was put on what’s called a Stryker frame, which looks like an old-fashioned barbeque device, except people lie on this device and they place a grid either on your back or stomach; this way they turn you every two hours to avoid pressure sores.

What I remember most is the immediate isolation from my friends at the camp, and knowing it was a beautiful summer passing by outside the window. I was in this small room with institutional green paint on the walls and construction going on outside the window. I had gone from being a highly active, intensely kinetic young individual to being an immobile individual. The felt experience of that contrast was quite dramatic. I realized all of a sudden that in dealing with unpleasant physical sensations where was no way to distract myself – I couldn’t even pace, scratch or rub any area that was hurting, sore, itching or anything. I couldn’t move anything.

I was terrified, with no outlet for expressing it. They weren’t telling me what my chances were of being able to resume normal physical activity. I was given little information except what the x-rays showed and what they would try to do in the operation. A team of surgeons came and evaluated me to see where my levels of sensation were, to see what neurological connections were still there. Before the surgery I could feel sensation on my toes, but after the spinal fusion I had no sensation in my toes.

Essentially what they did was take a piece of bone from my hip and opened up my neck from the back. They realigned the vertebrae and reassembled the fractured pieces. They placed the chip of bone over the top of these three vertebrae and wrapped it with a piece of stainless steel wire. That was the physical fix that enabled me to live.

After about two weeks they removed the stitches. I was in the Stryker frame from late September – almost three months, going from back to front, front to back, every two hours. I did understand I was bound to lose some physical movement, but again, I had no confirmation from the physicians, and I had some hope that a good range of movement would return.

I was in the hospital for ten months and went through almost every imaginable emotional response. Unlike other people I wasn’t so much obsessed with “Why me?” but rather was so amazed that a loss of such magnitude could occur in such a banal accidental way. I had been raised by a devout Roman Catholic family and had been sent to mostly parochial schools. It was during this time I began to consider whether there really was, in fact, a God, and if there was, how does this being relate to my existence. At that age I didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with the level of pain, immobility, loss and disorientation that I was confronted with. Also, at that age, so many of your friendships are based on common interests, shared activities, so very quickly many of my friends who were supportive at first began to fade away.

What was important is that I was beginning to deal with questions that had to do with the very nature of existence. If this is what could happen to one with such a short life, what was this all about? Virtually everything I could do had been taken away from me: I could no longer play piano, I couldn’t move pieces on a chess board, I couldn’t do anything. Gradually I did regain some ability for movement, but it took a lot of time and much hard work. Still, at the end of the period of intense rehabilitation, I was still far from where I wanted – I was still a quadriplegic.

I saw the world can turn 360 degrees instantaneously, and that’s a fact that would take me months – years – to process and understand. It brought the fact of death right up into the forefront of my consciousness – I had experienced disembodiment, leaving any sense of bodily experience behind.

When I left the hospital, I lived at home with my mother for a year, but I felt a burden so decided to move out. Also, I wanted to be more independent. Actually, the State of Wisconsin, whom I’d been working for before the accident, wanted me to go into a nursing home – but I told them the only way they would get me into a nursing home was in a coffin!

I moved into a small student apartment in Madison, Wisconsin. At that point I did not have a motorized wheelchair, so I was completely dependent on another muscular and solid person to push me around if I wanted to go anyplace. This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act and before serious implementation of the civil rights bill for people with disabilities.

I started school that September. I was in the liberal arts program of a local technical college, preparing to transfer to the University of Wisconsin, where, after four years, I studied educational philosophy with a psychology minor.

What was most difficult around other people was the loss of control over the simplest functions and states of my body, specifically neuromuscular activity. Because of the ways many classrooms were designed I had to sit up in front; most classrooms were built at a slant with stairs. I would get these fantastically powerful leg spasms on my right side that would kick my leg out as if in a goose step and they would literally pull me down in the wheelchair. I would start the class sitting up in the wheelchair and by the end of the class I was practically falling out of the chair, literally.

Being a young male and not being very deft physically worked against me and isolated me, and having no control at all over much of my body was an excruciating embarrassment. I would employ every small amount of control I did have to make myself remain completely immobile so I didn’t go into these wild states of muscular spastic activity.

Once, when I went to one of my first classes, my urinary leg bag began leaking, and pretty soon there was a large pool of urine under my right leg. Anyone slightly bored or distracted who looked around the room would see it, and needless to say I was painfully self-conscious. There were many incidents when students went on special trips to see films and speakers at other colleges, and the facilities were simply not accessible. I had to stay behind in these cases.

It was common that people behaved either awkwardly around me or simply ignored me while paying attention to other students. Not only was there this sense of being damaged goods, but that I was now a member of a minority group that was perceived negatively. About that time I became interested in the number of ways people in wheelchairs, with disabilities and deformities were associated with negativity, evil, darkness. I noticed how much the word “lame” is very popular.

For almost four years I was taking the maximum dosage of Demerol, Dilaudid, morphine – the psychiatrist had me rotate between these drugs to minimize the speed at which I would develop tolerance to any one of them. I was injected four times a day. I became attached to the needle, to the sense of the needle going in. That sensation assured me that it was “real,” that I was actually getting this analgesic, this pain relief. As well as the opiates I was also taking barbiturates such as Seconal and Phenobarbital, benzodiazepines such as Valium and Librium, antidepressants, antispasmodics – so many different types of medications.

This was in combination with alcohol – at times huge quantities, and marijuana. I was incredibly depressed. It got to the point that the weight of all the medications was so oppressive that I couldn’t remember simple facts; it affected my long- and short-term memory, especially short-term. I couldn’t focus well enough to do what I wanted to do with my mind. I couldn’t communicate clearly, I couldn’t hear music in my mind, I couldn’t write a decent letter. I felt completely out of control. Not only was my body undermined, but now my mind as well. Not much left! I knew that I had to make a decision: either regain my mental clarity or terminate my existence.

I was isolated and I was taking all these drugs, and then I had some experiences with very good quality LSD on three occasions and mescaline on two other occasions. They were instrumental in opening up other dimensions mentally. They opened the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley said, and ironically they reflected back to me how deeply convoluted my mental state had become.

The experiences I had with psychedelic drugs were, in my case, a stepping stone to becoming curious about the meaning and significance of those experiences mentally. They suggested to me that there were whole other dimensions of perception that I could undergo. I began to wonder what they implied. Because of the paralysis and immobility, my isolation, my marginalized status, I felt as though I were in captivity, that I was shut up and stored away. There was this claustrophobic feeling that I couldn’t extend myself out into the world, in particular the natural world – to be out and about in forests, prairies, meadows.

I think it’s a natural desire at that age to strike out, venture forth, experience more of whatever is out there. Now I couldn’t do that the same way physically. I was beginning to understand that all too clearly. So the possibility of being able to do things and go other places in my mind – with it being the primary vehicle rather than the body – was a bridge.

The other factor in my life at that time was the presence of a few people who had been studying and practicing Eastern religions. Some had traveled to India, and one was a student of Ramana Maharshi’s senior disciples. They gave me books they felt were relevant to my experiences with LSD. This was my first encounter with Eastern religions. The first book I read was Vedanta for the Western World. From there on, gradually, as the months and years went by, I began to explore more philosophies, as well as meditation.

It was at this point that I stopped all medications, once I began to see there was substance to the techniques I was learning: systematic relaxation, breathing and mantra recitations. I did it on my own – there were no programs then. I did it cold turkey.

My personal care assistant who had traveled to India and who was also interested in Zen Buddhism had become good friends with a senior student of Geshe Lhundup Sopa in the University of Wisconsin Southeast Asia Studies Department. He invited me to come to Geshe-la’s private talks that he had begun giving on weekends. He suggested I look at a book entitled The Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development by Geshe Dhargyey. This was very powerful for me, although I had a problem with the concept of the hell realms and using fear as a motivating factor for spiritual practice. But this was the first contact with Tibetan Buddhism.

Tibetan Buddhism takes a very psychological approach and goes right to the heart of the matter, instead of issuing commandments, rules. Instead of saying what is good conduct and bad conduct alone, it also presents a variety of methodological vehicles whereby one can develop the skills needed to operate in accord with a code of behavior that is positive and beneficial, not only for oneself, but for all other beings. There are so many different aspects of the Dharma that appealed to me the more I studied and went to teachings. I was a very poor student at first – I had little conception of how vast the literature is. For some years I floundered about and wasted a lot of time, but nonetheless used what little skill I had to work with difficult states of mind.

The concept of emptiness enabled me to gradually see that I was not my body alone, and that was a great comfort to me. Instead of being someone with a concrete physical status, I was a being with consciousness with a body that is impermanent that would not remain, eventually would die, and given my karmic predisposition I could go to a different body. Just the fact of having a way intellectually of seeing myself other than this body, this disability that defines myself and my existence, helped a great deal, even though my understanding of emptiness was very, very modest. The concept alone was very helpful.

I began to realize how powerful my mind could be, and much more than I could ever see, by body as well. I could see the potential uses to which I could put myself, a.k.a. bodily self. As an athlete, as an outdoorsman, as a person accustomed to wielding his body as the primary instrument of his life, Buddhism really gave me a completely different perspective on that, and depending on how I changed my mind, focused it, worked to concentrate it – which was a real problem for me, because I was coming out of a period of mental convolution, emotional confusion, depression, a lot of emotional pain as well as physical pain – it helped me to realize how much I could do to change my experience by working constructively with different mental factors.

This disability has helped me develop compassion for others, absolutely. Even while I was lying in the hospital on a Stryker frame after the injury, within a few months the pain I was experiencing was so great that I spent many hours thinking about pain in and of itself. I thought of the different animals that I had hunted, injured and killed, and also fished, and I vowed to myself that should I ever regain my physical ability, I would never again hunt or harm another being, except in the case of physical defense.

When I met the Buddhadharma, I realized how sensitive an issue this is in general and how even rolling down a sidewalk in my wheelchair I was taking the lives of ants, insects and other creatures. On one level the teachings on bodhichitta accorded with my own level of intuitive sensibilities, and on another level it was very exciting and inspiring to know there were individuals who really believed this doctrine of bodhichitta. They not only believed it but carried it out to the maximum extent and realized the teaching in their minds.

I remember reading the issue of Wisdom magazine that came out when Lama Yeshe died, and the teaching he gave on bodhichitta. That teaching was very influential in my understanding on bodhichitta, as was Lama Zopa’s book Transforming Problems into Happiness. Bodhichitta seemed to me to be the spiritual muscle of Tibetan Buddhism. I think for a while I fell into that trap where I thought this was something that could only be realized by high-level practitioners who had had monastic experience and much time in retreat, and that a simple student like myself wasn’t realistically going to be able to produce much bodhichitta on a day-to-day basis. It’s true that lifestyle and physical limitations can be an impediment to religious practices, but nonetheless that printed teaching by Lama Yeshe on bodhichitta and the articles about his dying and his death were very inspiring for me and I’ve re-read them many times.

And of course [there is] the concept of karma, and this experience being purification. If this isn’t purification I’m in real trouble! At one point the Dalai Lama uses just a few choice words about how whatever the level of problem or challenge, one must generate the necessary amount of motivation to overcome it. Doing that on an ongoing basis is formidable, but where and when I’ve been able to learn from the experiences and grow from the difficulties feels very good – it’s self-rewarding.

We can look at our lives from the perspective of how much we’ve overcome, and I think my life is much more about the latter than the former. That might be another way of saying is the glass half empty or half full, and yet a lot of my life has been about overcoming limitations, which, if anything, will increase as I get older. To feel that my life is meaningful I need to overcome these limitations so that I can be of use, of help, of assistance, benefit to other individual beings, otherwise I don’t feel I’m properly using it. My take on life in general is that it doesn’t have to be a whole lot of fun, but it does have to be the ultimate education, and one does need to avail on as many opportunities to develop virtue as possible.

Whatever I accomplish in terms of my Dharma practice, I think what’s most important to me is a blend of those two: practicing and overcoming limitations. The disability presents limitations my own mind presents – which are numerous! If I’m not useful, not able to help people, strangers, friends, neighbors, aliens, whoever, I don’t feel good about myself and I don’t feel I’m moving in the right direction.

It’s tricky for me because without doing something that has a physical basis, like making tsa-tsas, building a prayer wheel or digging the base of a stupa, I feel that I’m operating in a much less tangible realm. I focus on what I can do, but it’s often the less tangible stuff: crisis work, listening to a friend or a stranger who is having problems. So much of what I can do doesn’t result in a product – it’s invariably more of a process. Sometimes that’s tricky for me, knowing whether I’m doing enough, to get a sense for whether my existence is beneficial for others. At the same time that encourages me to see how this process of benefiting others isn’t always a matter of fixing things in a gross physical sense, with money or material things, but using right speech, right thought and right behavior in interaction with others.

Sometimes there’s a sense that the sheer fact of being alive with a severe disability and making real effort to do what I can achieves a certain role model effect for others. Maybe other people can look at me and say, “If this guy in a wheelchair can make it through teachings, so can I.” I don’t think about that very much myself. I’m more apt to be reminded about it when other people remark on it. People see someone faced with a major challenge and it’s obvious to them that they’re operating under stressful circumstances; it’s a reminder that they, too, can exceed what they considered to be their limitations. It’s true I’ve learned something about limitations – the ones we perceive as real and the ones which in fact are real. People will say to me, “I can never do what you do, I could never live the life of a quadriplegic,” but most often that’s not true. You do it if you have to do it, although not all people with disabilities make it. Some choose to take their lives because it’s just been too difficult for them, and worse, they’ve not received sufficient assistance from the state, government and community so they can live constructive lives.

As for my physical condition now: Initially the doctors didn’t believe I would get any return of function of wrist movement alone. I am able, with the use of this orthotic splint, which structures and exploits the pinching action of the thumb and forefinger, to drive, brush my teeth, write. It’s just my wrist muscle but it enables me to do many functional things. My right hand is my primary instrument and my left hand is more of a support.

I lost one of my bicep components, so on my right side I have a monocep instead of a bicep. I’ve developed a lot of shoulder and neck strength as well as arm strength the doctors didn’t think I’d recoup. Besides that there’s going to be a lot of chronic pain for the rest of my life. This is around the site of the accident to some degree, and I also injured my left hip several years ago when I went over a bump in the wheelchair at night. A sore developed there and a hole as big as a fist went all the way to the fascia of the bone; osteomyelitis set in and a septic infection with the bone marrow started. There’s a high mortality rate with this infection; acutely infected areas die. The surgeons had to go in and cut out a large chunk of bone from my left butt. There’s a huge hole there as a result of that, so I tend to list starboard. They took tissue from my thighs and literally stuffed the hole with new tissue. I had to stay in bed for several months. Because I had osteomyelitis once, any other pressure sore I develop could get very serious.

Small bumps on my backside bother me a lot. I had a surgery on my backside where the doctors tried to put a swift and easy end to the pain and spasticity in my lower body by going into my spine, having off a vertebra and using a scalpel to cut right down through the center of the spinal cord — the surgery was a failure, and as a result I’ve experienced a great deal of pain in my back. The pain of sitting and not being able to move is one that’s difficult to describe, but it’s one I’m faced with on a daily basis. I’ve had to develop a certain amount of mental strength so I can overcome that and operate.

One of the major hazards of having a spinal cord injury is that you tend to sit for long amounts of time. Because of this you get skin breakdowns. Depending on how early you catch them and how well you treat them, it may take days, weeks or months for them to heal. I’ve spent three entire summers – late May, June, July and all of August – in bed without getting out of bed. There are more sophisticated bandaging and treatment methods available today. I also have limited use of my diaphragm. I don’t possess the entire group of chest muscles that the average male has, so as a result I don’t have so much control over the depth of my breathing process. Any kind of respiratory illness places me at great risk; a cold can be very serious for me.

Once, in Yucca Valley, taking teachings from Song Rinpoche, some Dharma friends pressured me into asking Rinpoche about my physical circumstances, specifically whether there were any external obstacles. I really didn’t want to do this; personally I thought it was a waste of time. But I did go and speak with Song Rinpoche about this and he threw a mo. He sat very quietly for a few moments in that inimitably serene way of Song Rinpoche, and he turned to me and said, “Don’t worry so much about this life. It’s very short. Think about your next life.” Then he gave me a meditation on Chenrezig to perform, along with some blessing pills. That felt to me intuitively and intellectually to be right on.

For the sake of others who sustain a physical disability I hope improvements in medical science take place that enable healing or cures to happen – for someone such as Christopher Reeves, who is relatively close to the time of his injury. I was injured when I was 17 and now I’m 46, and Song Rinpoche’s advice becomes more pertinent with each passing day: Don’t worry about this life so much – think about the next.

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