My grandpa was the person who taught me how to throw a ball, catch a ball, and shoot a basketball.  If he went with what the doctors told him, my grandpa would only be able to move one arm.  He wouldn’t have taught me how to be the athlete I am today.  For all I know, I could have been a scrawny little kid who sits inside, reads books, or plays videogames all day.  Thankfully, I am the person I am today because of my grandpa’s determination and desire to prove the doctors wrong.

“You’ll never be able to move your arm again.”  These are the words that were spoken to my grandpa over thirty years ago in 1982.  It’s a tragic story, but the ending isn’t so tragic.  It was a normal day at the DANA corp. plant in Lima, Ohio.  One this particular day, he was working on one the plant’s electrical transformers that powered the machines.  He came in for second shift at three p.m. and went right to work.  His foreman told him, “Replace the transformer in one of the machines.”  Normally, this is a two-man job; however, my grandpa was told to replace it by himself.  The workers in the earlier shift had jerry-rigged a system to remove the transformer from the machine.  There was a thin piece of sheet metal that he was supposed to move the transformer onto.  My grandpa had to remove a huge transformer from one of the machines, which only have a space only two-to-three foot from the next machine, on his own. The transformer was two feet out of the machine when the sheet metal became extremely flimsy.  The 382-pound transformer tipped and fell on his left shoulder, pinning him up against the transformer and the machine.  “I glanced to the right, and I could see my left arm on the right side.  I knew it was bad,” my grandpa told me.  He screamed to a worker who was at another machine, about twenty feet away, but he didn’t spot my grandpa stuck under the transformer.  My grandpa told me that during this incident he never panicked.  Keeping composed was the critical factor because he could have been injured far worse if he had panicked.  He pushed the transformer back onto the ramp or platform and rushed to the hospital by himself.  His arm lay at his side the entire time.  It never moved once.  The doctors took a picture of it, gave him a sling, and sent him home.  He went back the next day, and the doctors told him to try and exercise and that it would go back to normal.  My grandpa told them that he couldn’t move it at all, so they put dye in his shoulder and took another picture.  The results were not good.  The doctors came back and said his shoulder was torn up.  Muscles were torn around his rotator cuff, and the doctors operated on it immediately.  After surgery the doctor told my grandpa, “You won’t be able to move your arm again.”

My grandpa said, “I can’t work with one arm,” so he went to physical therapy where the nurse was not allowed to help him.  My grandpa had to do all the physical therapy by himself.  For the first two months, he couldn’t move his arm at all.  He would go to therapy in the morning, noon, and around three p.m. and try to move his arm.  At home he would lie on the floor and pull on his fingers to move his arm, only two or three inches.  He dedicated all his time to his physical therapy.  My grandpa has said to me, “It hurt so bad; you can’t even imagine!”  His therapy began to make progress after two months, but he was off of work for a year.  The doctors said that he wouldn’t be able to lift ten pounds over his head, but after thirty-two years, my grandpa has never had a problem with his left shoulder since.  He has almost full range of motion, and he hasn’t had any pain since it happened.  He only now has a four-inch scar on his shoulder. 

One decision that my grandpa made changed my life.  When the doctor told him he wouldn’t move his arm again, he chose not to believe it.  I started thinking about how one decision can change someone’s entire life more and more so after my grandpa told me this story of perseverance.  I never knew just how important my grandpa influenced my life.