The National
Spinal Cord
Injury Association

Disability in the News

30 Steps & Many Hard Lessons

LAKE OSWEGO - The fire chief's wife straps the custom steel-and-fiberglass braces to his legs as he prepares for physical therapy.

Scott Dodd, the wheelchair-bound leader of the 50-member Lake Oswego Fire Department, pushes the pain from his mind as he confronts a grueling workout.

One thundering truth about being paralyzed is how ruthlessly it teaches humility. Overnight, Dodd changed from rescuer, paramedic, fire chief to a 49-year-old man who needs help taking a bath. His wife, Nina, showed him the way. She was always there to help, with grit and a smile. He wouldn't have made it without her.

"This ought to be good," Dodd says to his physical therapist as he grasps the tin walker and hoists himself. With a grunt, he rises to a position the doctors said he would never reach - to his feet.

The 17 months since his injury have seemed like a lifetime. Today, his body has no memory of how to walk. But he yearns to prove the doctors wrong. He will walk again. He will ride his Harley Davidson into a summer evening again. He will hit fungoes to a pack of young outfielders again.

He will not yield.

The hallway beckons at North Lake Physical Therapy, the clinic Dodd visits three times a week. The 30-foot reach of green carpet once seemed like a marathon course. Simply standing with the help of the navy blue braces and the walker took all his strength. Now he ponders 30 steps.

He must concentrate to fire the muscles in his hip and thigh. He never really understood the complexity of a single step. The injury taught him that, as it did other things.

He strains and slowly raises his right leg. He slides it forward, leaning hard on the walker. Then the left leg, which comes a little harder. It was his left leg that lost feeling first in the hospital when he went dead from the waist down. He pushes it forward and creeps the walker ahead. He is walking.

"They said it couldn't be done, but they didn't know my husband," Nina says.

His was an unlikely injury. Dodd and his son, Michael, now a senior at LaSalle High School, were repairing the brakes on his Harley. The date has become a personal Pearl Harbor - Saturday, Oct. 26, 1996, the day his world changed forever.

He felt a pain in his back and tried to ignore it. When it intensified the next day, he went to the hospital. He sensed something was seriously wrong. In the emergency room, the doctors grew agitated when he lost feeling in his legs. He transferred to Emanuel Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery. When he awoke, a surgeon gave him the bad news. A disk had ruptured and pinched his spinal column, damaging vital nerves. He had no feeling from the sternum down. The doctor then said the words Dodd would not forget: Don't expect to get anything back.

As he lay in a daze in the recovery room, his first thoughts were of his family. How would they cope with this? What kind of a burden would he become? In the months ahead, he would see his injury bring his family closer.

He never imagined this could happen to him. He was, after all, a firefighter, the man who normally rode to the rescue.

He was one of the first 12 paramedics in the innovative Phoenix, Ariz., department, rolling on more than 11,000 calls. He fell through a floor inside a burning building and wrecked his knee. A ceiling fell on him once; he was burned several times. He was exposed to hazardous materials and to hepatitis in the days before paramedics wore rubber gloves and eye shields.

He thought he had seen it all in his years on Rescue 1. Some days the mayhem never stopped. They caught 20 emergency calls a shift, from car accidents to gang shootings. But the bad stuff always happened to someone else. When there was pain and crisis, he was the guy they called to fix it.

That all changed one Saturday afternoon in his own garage. The bad stuff came home.

"That's a pretty good start," he says, breathing hard. He pauses to rest eight paces into his therapy, eight labored steps toward his future. Kyle Lesko, his physical therapist, braces Dodd as he rests. Lesko and the other therapists have been amazed at the chief's will. He has not sunk into the self-pity and depression that haunts many spinal cord patients. Dodd has been undaunted.

It hasn't been easy to stay positive. He was an active man who loved his job. He once drove dragsters and met his wife through a racing friend. He coached baseball for 22 seasons in Arizona and managed his son's Babe Ruth team when the family moved to Oregon three years ago.

The move to Lake Oswego fulfilled a dream. After 23 years he had risen to deputy chief in the Phoenix fire department. But the Phoenix he'd known as a kid had radically changed. Unchecked sprawl had turned the area into a small Los Angeles.

He and his wife wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest. He knew his years in Phoenix, a progressive department with an outstanding reputation, would serve him well. He was a finalist for the chief's jobs in Tacoma, Corvallis and Bend. A friend and colleague edged him out in Vancouver, Wash. But things went well when he interviewed in Lake Oswego. His knack of putting people at ease won him supporters.

"We picked him as our chief," Lt. Peggy Hally says. "He was the one the line was pulling for."

He arrived in March 1995 and almost immediately put his stamp on what he knew was an outstanding fire department. He viewed town residents as customers and worked to instill that spirit. The department manual quotes Total Quality Management concepts and borrows a rule from the L.L. Bean Co. - "A customer is not an interruption of our work, he/she is the purpose of it."

The injury changed his perspective. He was grateful to be alive, to have the support of such a wonderful family. His wife and son visited each day in the hospital; Nina noticed how Michael huddled close to his father, resting a hand on his shoulder.

She seemed to think only of her husband. She put aside her job as an escrow officer for a title company and devoted herself to his schedule. Daily routines became major obstacles. At first, it took him three hours to shower and prepare for work. With Nina's help, things got easier.

He learned not to worry about small problems and focused on his recovery. He surprised himself at how well he coped. He always suspected he might become angry and bitter if such a tragedy happened to him. But he did not.

The department and the community rallied around. OHICO Construction, a Lake Oswego company, built a ramp around the Dodd's split-level house free of charge. Firefighters cooked meals for the family. "This community has been great to me and my family," he says. "Hopefully, I am giving something back."

He pressed ahead. As a paramedic, Dodd shielded himself from the human side of the carnage. Patients were easier to deal with in terms of blood pressure and vital signs. When they died en route to the hospital, it made him feel hollow. He squirmed when their bereaved families brought baskets of fruit to the firehouse to say thanks for the help he'd offered.

But his injury cultivated a more compassionate side. He says it made him a better person. The fire chief learned just how thin his grasp on the world was. "We are a heartbeat away," he says, "it can all change in a blink."

He also saw how different life is in a wheelchair. While rehabilitating at Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland, he and his family went out for coffee. They struggled to find a coffeeshop accessible to a wheelchair.

He learned how sightlines for wheelchair seating at the Rose Garden are obscured when people stand in the rows ahead. In a letter to the editor, he urged Paul Allen, the building's owner, to correct the problem.

He was confident he could continue to do his job well. His assistant chief picked up some tasks immediately after the injury. Dodd held staff meetings in his hospital room and was back on the job in less than three months.

This year, the city is buying a van equipped with a self-loading wheelchair ramp so he can get around more easily. But the city didn't hire him to aim nozzles at flames or steer fire trucks. His job is to manage a $4.5 million budget and lead a department responsible for protecting the lives and property of 50,000 residents in Lake Oswego and three adjoining fire districts.

His zeal for customer service helped the department's Community Emergency Response Teams succeed. More than 300 residents have gone through the emergency training, making Lake Oswego one of Oregon's most prepared cities in the event of a disaster. In a January survey, residents gave the fire department the highest rating of all city services.

"Scott has pushed the fire department out into the community more," Police Chief Les Youngbar says. "I think that is Scott Dodd. What is impressive is he hasn't given up on that even though he has had some tremendous personal challenges."

The burly chief strains to move the walker forward. Amid the swirl of exercise bikes and rowing machines, other patients pause to watch as Scott Dodd closes in on 30 steps.

"Looking good, babe," Nina says as her husband, sweat beading on his forehead, trudges toward the end of the hall.

The doctors said he would get nothing back. Ironically, feeling has returned to his legs, mostly in the form of pain. Sometimes, it feels like needles are sticking into his legs or electric current jolting down them.

Some sensations are like nothing he's felt before - such as the feeling in his heart.

"I am a fortunate man," he tells people, some of whom are bewildered by such pronouncements. But though the fire chief is confined to a wheelchair, he stands tall to those who know him.

"There is an inner strength you see in Scott and his family that is inspiring," says Susan Noack, a friend.

In his mind's eye, Scott Dodd sees himself standing, beside a motorcycle or a baseball diamond. His resolute nature pushes him forward toward the end of the hallway, toward the rest of his life.

"Nice job, Scott," his therapist says as he finishes 30 steps and sits. "Ohh baby, man!" exhales Dodd as he sips a cup of water and heaves like a sprinter. "It was easier to learn how to walk the first time.

Brian Meehan is a reporter in The Oregonian's suburban news department. He can be reached at 221-4341 or by mail at The Oregonian, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, Ore. 97201. His e-mail address is brianmeehan@news.oregonian.com

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