Living Beyond “What If?” | Cambry Kaylor – Hope Works

[Music] hi i'm cambrie kaler and that video clip was me and that sport you saw is equestrian vaulting so it's gymnastics and dance on the back of a moving horse and it's a beautiful sport i fell in love with as a child and although it looks pretty extreme it's actually one of the safer horse disciplines out there and i spent 10 years training in that sport to become an international competitor also during that time i was a ballerina i did a little bit of gymnastics i did cheerleading and i was also a member of my high school diving team so i saw myself as an athlete and a horse woman but on june 21st 2005 i was training with my team and miscommunicated with my partner on the horse went for my aerial dismount off and hit my partner with my leg it changed my rotation in the air and i landed in a position that broke my back and severed my spinal cord i became permanently paralyzed from the waist down i lost all feeling in control of my legs and my dreams for the future were crushed my life drastically changed i remember when the doctor broke the news i had a couple of questions for him the first was will i be able to have children and the second can i ride horses again now he knew the first one he said yes no problem you can have children in the future great and then he just kind of gave me a blank stare for the second and luckily my coach was there at the time and she not really sure what the answer was herself said yes cambrie you'll be able to ride again and that provided a little bit of hope and comfort for the future but it was quickly replaced by fear i remember just shortly after my first surgery having nightmares i'd be walking around doing things with family and friends like i had done before when all of a sudden i would freeze and my legs would collapse from underneath me and i was left stranded i'd wake up and see my family and ask them what are we doing here hoping not to get the answer i thought i was hoping they would say oh you broke your leg cambrie or you had really bad food poisoning i wanted to hear something other than the truth i wanted my paralysis to be a nightmare i could wake up from so i started therapy and i remember the first first week of therapy practicing with my physical therapist we were working on my balance and i sat on the edge of the mat with him he wanted to see how long i could sit up on my own without falling and i sat there working on my balance and i thought to myself just last week i was balancing a handstand on the back of a moving horse and here i am i can't even sit on up on my own who am i i'm not cambrie kaler i'm a crippled version of what i used to be and who's going to want to be my friend or even date me when i go to college in the fall surely no one that knows me as a paraplegic just the people that knew me before so i thought how am i going to get my old life back i have to walk the doctor said it was impossible and scientists were still researching methods to hopefully one day cure my spinal cord but i figured i had to walk i had to see my peers eye to eye and be at their level again so i did some research of my own and i found a personal trainer who taught paraplegics to walk with braces and canes so you could be upright and walk so i spent nearly two years training learning to walk again and at my peak i was able to cross about 50 feet in five minutes time so you can imagine as a sophomore on campus i didn't get very far and i was taking naps throughout the day just to keep my energy to be able to walk and i would turn down social engagements and not hang out with friends and fear that i was going to slow them down i didn't want to be a burden and every time i walked i ran the risk of slipping and falling and injuring the two extremities that i can use and i thought what am i doing this isn't bringing me any joy i certainly don't have my old life back what am i doing and i realized in that moment that i didn't have to walk to be happy i wasn't going to get my old life back but i could create a new life full of happiness and that's what i was searching for all along was to be happy so i went back to the place that made me the most happy and that's the stables i went back first as a coach and love it i still coach i love it so much i thought that if i could help others do dance and gymnastics on the back of a horse that it would fill that horse part of my identity that i used to have i didn't get on the horse hardly at all because i was afraid that i really wouldn't be able to do anything but one day my mom's riding partner didn't show up and she asked me to sub in and ride the horse i said yes even though i didn't really want to i was afraid like i said i didn't want to get on and look like a fool because i couldn't even get the horse to move forward what commands with my legs could i give them and i didn't want to fall off i didn't want to look like a fool but i got on the horse i didn't fall off we walked a little bit we trotted a little bit and then we ended in a figure eight and i went home on cloud nine i thought oh this piece of me has come back i have part of my identity back and i was so excited until i had this little bit of fear thinking what if it was just an anomaly like what if you just imagined that that really didn't happen so i decided i had to figure out right then and asked my mom to take my horse back to the stables with me so we went back to the stables put her in the cross ties and i went to go get the equipment for her to get her ready my mom at the time found some friends and ran over and talked to them and i decided to get my horse ready by myself so i went into the tack room grabbed my tack brought it over to my horse and started brushing her down put her pad on that was easy i went back to the tack room to grab the saddle however and where do you think i found the saddle on the top saddle rack of course two feet above my head so i looked around the tack room and found a pitchfork i grabbed the pitchfork carefully put the sharp end down and the other end i wedged under the saddle and pulled it to the edge grabbed it from the rack and then realized i couldn't put it on my lap because my wheels would get in the way and i would just be stuck there so i put it on the only logical place i could find which was my head i shoved it on my head put the pitchfork down and went out to my horse put it up on her back cinched her up got the bride on we are ready to go by this time my mom's friends had left and she came over to see what she could do to help so we brought the horse over to the arena and when we got into the arena we looked at each other and realized we didn't know how i was gonna get on the horse her instructor had lifted me earlier and now we were the only two people at the barn so my mom said cambrie you know i know you just got her tacked up but why don't we come back another day when your brothers can help get you on or the instructor can come back and we'll get you on i thought are you kidding me i just hacked her up on my own this is i'm riding so we looked around the arena and i saw some dirt some more dirt and even more dirt and then there was a fence so we put opal on one side of the fence and i came over to the other side of the fence and thought i'm strong enough i could do this sure i grabbed onto the first rung and pulled myself up onto it it was a lot harder than i thought it was my legs were just kind of dangling dead weight there and i could hear in the back of my mind the nurses from my initial rehab telling me cambrie don't ever sit on a hard surface because you could get a pressure sore that takes weeks or even months to heal do not sit on a hard surface i'm keep climbing got to the next wrong and i must have been sweating profusely at this time and really red in the face because my mom looked at me and said cambrie this is ridiculous you're going to get hurt let's go home i looked at her and said mom i'm already paralyzed what more could happen she didn't say much more i climbed up got over to my horse pulled myself through grabbed my leg pulled it over and sat upright on my horse we walked and trotted for about two minutes and ended in a figure eight it was real i had that part of my identity back so grateful although i'm sure my horse got a good laugh as i climbed up that fence and laughter is something i tend to use frequently because my life is just a series of awkward uh moments experiences the most awkward one i can think of actually happened my sophomore year of college when i enrolled in an anatomy course and as required you have a lab with the anatomy and in the lab they have carefully dissected cadavers and they put them on huge trays on tables so that the students can learn and they're very thoughtful to have it at a height that when you're standing you don't have to lean over and hurt your back however i don't stand so i saw about this much of the cadaver and the ta had a brilliant idea to grab the office chair bring it out and crank it up to the top so i could be tall like everybody else great he swooped me out of my chair put me in the big chair and then pushed me over to the table i thought this guy was awesome i was about to like bacon brownies or something because this was great until i leaned a little too far and the wheels gave way and i landed in the cadaver yeah not on the cadaver in the cadaver okay cadaver juice all down the front of me thankfully i had goggles on horrific okay i i did not laugh at that moment it was disgusting uh it took a couple months later after the smell had finally gotten out of my hair and off my clothes um i threw them away it was horrific but i did learn from that experience that maybe awkward horrible unpleasant things can be funny in the future now when i first meet people or people first meet me they have a bunch of questions right i'm different so they asked me how i got hurt and they'll ask me can i live on my own can i drive a car do i miss doing the gymnastics on horseback yes to all of those things and then i get this question what if you could go back to that day and change it so that you never got paralyzed would you do it well 18 year old cambria would say yes in a heartbeat yes please however now looking back at all the experiences and lessons i've had since that day learning to love and accept myself regardless of my physical appearance learning to find what makes me happy and go after it regardless of what obstacle is in the way and to find humor in awkward and difficult situations it's taught me to look at the big picture and believe in god's plan instead of my plan living with paralysis has taught me so much that i wouldn't change that day and it's those experiences and lessons i've learned that i can return to when i'm going through something difficult i'm i don't get that job that i really wanted or i got a poor grade or whatever it is that happens i can look back and see where i've come from what i've been through and it's my hope tonight that all of you can take my experience to help you when you're trying to find hope when you're struggling with something that you can remember me cambrie the girl that fell off the horse and found a way to get back on thank you you

Channel: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Views: 3,373,190

Keywords: overcoming tragic accidents, overcoming limitations, living life to the fullest, opportunities for paraplegics, finding purpose in life, living your dreams, hope works, hope, jesus christ, jesus, wheelchair, jerry, mormon, channel, healing, horse

Id: ILCDfIBn1fw

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2016