Outdistancing troubles

He’s got an expensive set of wheels, one that lets him cruise the streets like few others. He solicits stares from passers-by, stares that betray the questions floating around their minds, like how a man so young could ride a set of wheels like his. Lance Sutterlin is in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed from the chest down in May 2002 after falling from a tree. But the St. Maries, Idaho, native insists on living an independent life. Sutterlin, 24, lives on his own in Spokane, attends classes at Spokane Falls Community College and does everything from cooking to laundry. Now, eager to get back into the sports he’s missed out on for too long, he’s joining the wheelchair racing team of St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute. “I can gain back something I had when I was able-bodied and could compete in sports,” he said. He got fitted for a race chair Wednesday and immediately zoomed onto the straightaway at the Whitworth College track. “He’s got to do it all,” said his mother, Angie Derry, as she watched him struggle with the nuances of the race chair for the first time. “He’ll just keep going and going until he drops.” A few laps later, the sweat glistened on his forehead and his light brown hair in front stabbed into the air. “My arms are rubber!” he yelled, before taking off the black gloves and rubbing his swollen wrists. How many laps? “Too many!” Sutterlin’s adventure of training a hunting dog in the forest just outside St. Maries went awry that day in late May more than two years ago. In the warm afternoon sun, he climbed a pine tree to place a bear-scented rag. But he lost his grip and two branches broke, dumping him 30 feet below. But instead of the forest ground, he landed on a tree trunk, severing his spine and fracturing his neck. “I couldn’t feel nothing,” he said quietly. “I thought, ‘This is gonna hurt,’ but when I did hit, it didn’t hurt at all, and I knew something was wrong.” It took three days filled with hot sun – he had second-degree sunburns when rescued – and two cold and damp nights before two friends found him. Unable to walk, he had punished his arms to drag his body out of the brush to where others could see him. He had damaged his diaphragm and couldn’t scream for help. By the third day, he was hallucinating out of dehydration. He finally made a desperate plea: “God, I can’t take this anymore. Please, please just let me die.” Two hours later, his friends arrived. The search party had spent two days searching for Sutterlin. He spent the next two weeks in Sacred Heart Medical Center. Doctors fused his vertebrae together and inserted two metal rods into his spine. Blood pressure problems forced him to remain in bed for three weeks. The few times Sutterlin sat up – moments lasting no longer than 30 seconds – blood rushed to his feet, and he would quickly pass out. Sutterlin then moved to St. Luke’s and remained there until after Labor Day. There, he practiced transferring in and out of his wheelchair, dressing himself and moving around in his wheelchair. He also wore, for five months after the surgery, a contraption to hold his neck upright. Wearing the device that encircled his head and neck required screwing it into his skull at four spots. “The worst is when they had to tighten the screws,” he said. Just above his eyebrows, he still bears the scars of the two screws in his forehead. Despite the physical remnants from his accident, Sutterlin shows few lingering emotional scars, saying he came to terms with his paralysis while lying in the woods. “Sometimes I was depressed, but I just kind of accepted it,” he said. Immediately after leaving the hospital, Sutterlin moved back to his own house in St. Maries, which the community raised money to remodel with a wheelchair-accessible ramp and shower. Sutterlin said that while the accident paralyzed him, it also taught him patience and provided him a new direction in life. Before the accident, he was working full-time as a logger and couldn’t attend college. Now his Social Security income gives him a chance for higher education. “I’m the same person, but I’m not the same person,” he said. Classes, studying and spending time with friends now fill his days. He’s taking two classes this summer, thinking he would like to go into social work and become a juvenile probation officer. He said he notices the little things now, things he previously took for granted, like steps on houses and unsloped curbs. He keeps a list in his head of which bars he can wheel into and which ones have doorways too narrow. But he doesn’t let these small setbacks get in the way of living an active and rewarding life. He cooks on the stove and washes his dishes in the sink, but he has to park his wheelchair sideways to the counter. The top cabinets in his kitchen sit empty, but his pantry houses extra shelves within easy reach. A blue, white and red bar light reading “Cold Beer” – the type of sign that fits inconspicuously into any college student’s apartment – comes with an extra long string for Sutterlin to turn on and off. “I can do everything else other people can,” he said. “It just takes me more time or I have to do it a different way.” He even drives. His brother installed hand controls in his car that allow him to use a lever to maneuver the pedals. But it’s when other people look at him differently that he becomes frustrated. “It really irritates me when people give you the I-feel-sorry-for-you smile,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I don’t want people to feel pity for me. I just want to live my life the best I can.” Sutterlin even cracks jokes about his paralysis, calling himself ‘Gimp-a-lot,’ said ex-girlfriend Mindy Finfrock. “He’d be like, ‘What’s the matter? Are you a gimp hater?’” she said, laughing. Finfrock remembers the first time she met him, in the lobby of the hair salon where she works. “Have you seen people who just glow?” she asked. “He just had this amazing aura about him.” She described Sutterlin as “very caring and understanding,” though in public, “he puts his walls up.” But overall, she simply described him as a go-getter. Sutterlin this summer wheeled himself from his home on the 200 block of Spokane Falls Boulevard to Spokane Falls Community College, roughly a four-mile journey, just to see if he could do it. He said he’s excited to join the St. Luke’s wheelchair racing team, and he also plans to join the wheelchair basketball team in the fall. “I think of things I can do, not things I can’t do,” Sutterlin said. “That’s why I’m doing the sports thing. I’m thinking I can be an inspiration to somebody.”