At this point in my SCI journey, there's a big part of me that's still searching for 'people like me' in the world. So, stumbling across a documentary about a Spinal Cord Injured person, that I've not yet seen - is pretty exciting to me. Initially, I found the documentary on Amazon Prime, but after seeing the paywall, I tried my luck with Youtube and found the full feature, completely free of charge!
The 45minute documentary follows the story of Sam Danniels - a professional athlete and T4 paraplegic. I spend a lot of time watching documentaries and have found they often they only focus on one aspect of a person/situation. When they're about disabled people, we are often portrayed as only being a person with a disability, rather than everything else that we are, with or without a disability. But this documentary was different, and it was amazing to see the film focus more on Sam's skills and achievements, as opposed to just his disability and the limitations he has.
Image Description: A promotional image for the documentary. A silhouette of a man in a manual wheelchair is on the left; he is on the sand of a beach, the sea is in front of him and the outline of the grass dunes is in the distance. 'Beyond The Break' is printed across the sky, below it 'The Sam Danniels Story'. (Image from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14307644/)
Sam had a mountain bike crash when he was 19, which left him with a T4 Complete Spinal Cord Injury. After this, he spent 125 nights in the hospital, before discharging himself from rehab, soon after mastering his floor-to-chair transfer. I could really relate to Sam's obsession with his floor-to-chair transfer because I was the same when I was in rehab. Sam describes the importance of the floor-to-chair transfer, by explaining that he could do anything then because he could fall out of his chair and get back in with no problem. His urgency to get back to his life, after paralysis, is summed up by what he said when he was in rehab - "I need to get out of here, because I'm not done."
After leaving the hospital, Sam refused to let his life-changing injury hold him back from doing what he loved. He remained a goal-focused guy and worked hard to get on with life as a wheelchair user. After his injury, Sam became a professional athlete, competed in the 2010 Paralympics, and went on to win a gold medal at the 2012 X Games. It was interesting to hear how Sam perceived his X Games Medal as being different from Paralympic medals because the medals won at the X Games, are the same medals that non-disabled athletes are competing for. Whereas, only disabled people compete for Paralympic medals, which puts disabled competitors in a category of people who are seen as 'not as good as their Olympic counterparts.
Image Description: A photo of Sam Danniels, a white man, with shoulder-length blonde hair, from the shoulders up. He is wearing a helmet and ski goggles and is smiling after he won gold at the X Games. (Image from: https://www.espn.com/action/xgames/winter/2012/story/_/id/7499284/samson-danniels-wins-winter-x-2012-mono-skier-x)
Today, Sam is a surfer, building his own adaptive surfboards/wave skis. He explains that there's no shop he can go to, to buy the board he needs and so he makes them himself. I think this happens a lot amongst marginalised communities in general, as we're the experts on what we need, so when no one is making what we need, we make it for ourselves. He also talks about surfing without the right equipment being really physically demanding; I know that as a paraplegic myself, having to carry out, even the simplest of, tasks, without the right adaptive equipment is exhausting, so it's understandable that he made the decision to make his own kit.
During the documentary, Sam also talks about his frustrations with the way he is sometimes treated by society, as a disabled person. Hearing him explain how he feels when people go out of their way to 'help' with things he doesn't need help with, really resonated with me, because I often feel the same way. He describes it as being a 'constant reminder' of the way he is perceived by the general public and how society imposes what they think he can/can't do, upon him. Personally, I think it comes down to society having low expectations of what disabled people are capable of, and the misunderstanding that when someone needs help with one thing, it must mean they need help with everything - but that's a huge thing to unpack, so I'm not getting into that right now!
The film closes with Sam saying "I can't change my injury, but I get to decide what I do with my injury." and I think they're some really powerful words. No matter how many times we replay the events that led up to our injuries, we will never change what happened. So, shifting the focus onto the things we can do with our injuries promotes a more positive attitude towards our disabilities.
Final Thoughts
This documentary was an easy watch, and I'd definitely watch it again. I loved how the film focused on Sam, as a person, rather than only talking about his trauma and disability. It showed Sam as being many things: a talented surfer, Paralympic Alpine Skier, X Games Medalist, and Spinal Cord Injury Survivor. Often, disabled people are seen as only being disabled, and people forget that we are multifaceted; so, seeing the way Sam was portrayed as so much more than just a paraplegic, was really validating.
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