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I'm retired First Lieutenant Ian Brown. I was in the United States Air
Force. I went to the academy
in Colorado Springs. I began my career training in computer science however midway
through flight school ended up taking a job in Boston in the Air Force as a
developmental engineer. Shortly after taking the job up there I was paralyzed
in the line of duty in a
tragic accident
that left me a paralyzed about the uh... initially t2 level and
later slightly recovered to about t4
so looked at that and said well there’s two things I could do - sit back and try
to figure it out. Do I want to dwell on the past and think about what I lost or I can live in the here and
now and my philosophy in life has always been a long lines of that
time in life only ever moved in one direction
and moves forward
the more time you could look to and dwell on the past
thinking about things that have already transpired the less you can be
focused on where you are and where you need to go
and immediately from my injury on, I realized that the circumstance in my
past regardless of
my understanding of them
are not going to change
so I could either spend time trying to figure them out or spend time trying
to figure out where I’m going to go
and from
almost the very first day on um... as I recovered
I focused mainly on the future where I wanted to go what I wanted to do it
how I was going to get there. My schedule is a little bit chaotic so strap in and get ready for the
adventure
three days a week I wake up roughly three am_ get ready shower and prepare
myself for the day
do my first exercise
and drive seventy five miles up to the Bronx Veteran Affairs Medical Center
I do this Monday Wednesday Friday
I'd stop by to
uh... test pilot a new medical device
uh... created by a company that wanted to make an exo skeleton to get
paraplegics to walk again
I spent several hours up there
and then turn around and drive seventy five miles back home where I
come back shower go to the gym or actually I go to the gym then shower
then I cook and eat the first meal of the day
and then I start working on several different businesses that have been
uh...
working for uh... mainly as a volunteer beyond that I've been working on
along the way trying to transition my career into medicine so
I've got applications that I'm writing
so the typical Monday Wednesday Friday goes that way, then my Tuesday Thursdays
and weekends I spend doing my double workouts where I start off
in the morning riding an exercise bike with electrodes on my legs trying to strengthen
my legs
after that I know take off uh... all the electrodes uh... make my morning meal
prepare for the gym I hit the gym
for about an hour or so comeback make my lunch
then have to do all the things that I
neglected on the Monday Wednesday Friday since I only have those two days a week so
that's my shopping
taking care of and maintaining the vehicles and
are doing all the errands that you’d normally do on a daily basis but I've
got a very short window did you them in
you know in order to accomplished a few things in the remaining business hours
of the two days a week that I have available.
The challenges I have every day and I look almost as though you’re playing
a game and it’s a puzzle. It’s you’re way to figure it out.
It takes more time to do many things
and I’ll fail quite a bit more as I’m learning and to try to accomplish a
new task
as a person with a disability. But
to me there but the challenge there is great. Before I was injured, everything in
life just seemed to come so easily to me.
I didn't have that the same level of appreciation
for things that I was able to do everyday.
Advice is always a difficult thing to
try offer somebody because
many people are going to different things and their perception of what
they're going through is different from everybody's perception that might be in the
exact same circumstance
however I think one universal thing that might help others that helped me
was to look at life in this capacity
life is always going to take an amount of work to get to where you want to be
they're very few handouts…now there are some organizations that are very
generous out there looking to help people
but it’s your job to find them - your job to manifest those opportunities for you
there’s not going to be somebody taking care of everything you can ever imagine
pointing you in the right direction so you have to take the initiative, go out find these
opportunities, find a way things work, find what you need to accomplish
new things and to move forward
in life and it’s easy to sit back and regret things that are not readily available to you
or
uh... you know
to doubt the fact that there's going to be opportunities you know that might be
specifically tailored to your disability
that might not be the case
but if you think about things you are capable of doing find ways to adapt and
overcome the difficulties you have
you might be able to do many of the things that you
thought initially you were
unable or that you were not suited for