From Emergency Room to Finish Line

hello and welcome to my ted talk my name

is john mcbride i’m a teacher at the

metropolitan school

and my story is called from emergency

room to finish line

now i’ve had two constants in my life

education is sport

since i was a baby i guess i started

learning things i went through school my

schooling years and then i became a

teacher and i’ve never left

education that whole time i’ve always

been someone who’s very sporty i’m not

i’m not an amazing athlete i haven’t

made top teams

but i’ve always participated in a range

of different sports i run

i work out i surf as snowboard i play

tennis whatever

i really like to play sports and these

two things kind of uh coincide

in the middle of the story so i was in

my postgraduate year of university

which means i had finished my degree i

could have gone out and became a teacher

but myself and about 20 of the other

people that were

in my in my course decided to go back to

university for one more year of research

based study

and halfway through this year when we

finished our first semester

we decided that we were going to go out

for a dinner together because we had you

know we are halfway to the finish line

so we went out for a chinese a chinese

meal

and it was uh it was like a nice

celebration

most of the class came and after we

finished our meal we said let’s go

let’s go into a bar for a drink so

before uber was around you had to go out

onto the street and wave down a taxi and

that’s what we were doing

but for whatever reason there were no

taxis stopping on our side of the road

there were lots stopping on the other

side of the road

and where we were there was no like

pedestrian crossing or street lights to

cross

but i decided i was going to cross the

road um when the cars were clear

so i could go over and get a taxi for us

from that side of the road

and i did something called jaywalking

which

is actually illegal in many countries

i’ll explain what it is but basically

if somebody was to blame for this um

situation that i’m going to explain it

would have been me because i was jade

walking

luckily no one was to blame there was no

need but yeah just

uh it would have been my fault if it had

to come to it

so it’s not a solved story um what i did

all of the cars from my right i was on a

two-lane road like the one in the

picture

there were cars coming from my right and

from my left i waited till there was no

more cars coming from my right and i

walked to the middle of the road and

stood

on the white lines there and then i

waited for the cars coming from my left

so i could cross over to the other side

and get that taxi that’s jaywalking

standing in the middle of the road now

this is my first link to limitless

although most of the stories today are

going to talk about how you can break

through your limits and don’t let people

put limits on top of you

there’s a couple that you do need to

abide by and those in this case are your

physical limits

i was a human on a road i should have

been safer about what i was doing

i i a car versus a human is a very

unfair unfair fight so that physical

limit is something i should have paid

more attention to

now i’m standing in the middle of the

road there were no cars

coming from the right side moved to the

middle of the road right there’s three

cars coming from the left

the first one goes by the second one

goes by after that third one i’m going

to cross the road to get the taxi

in the third car there’s a pizza

delivery boy who’s driving home from

work he’s a 16 year old

he’s uh on his restricted license which

means he has to be home by 10 pm because

he can’t drive after that

so he’s finished delivering pizzas he’s

driving home

um what he sees in front of him

as he’s driving along the road is not me

because

i’m caught in the headlights of the cars

that are now coming from the right

behind me so i’m in the middle of the

road there now are cars coming from

behind me and there’s one more car

in front of me but because those

oncoming cars are shining their

headlights right

to where i am and then into the eyes of

the pizza boy

i get lost in the headlights so i’m

effectively invisible to him

what he does see is that on the other

side of the road there’s a group of

people that are about to do the same

thing that i’m doing they’re waiting for

him to go past

so they can walk to the middle of the

road and they can get to where i came

from

now to be super um conscious and uh a

super um careful driver he decides that

he’s going to do a slight swerve

around that group of people that are

coming from the side of the road

like if he went straight no problem he

wouldn’t have hit them or me

but to be super careful he does a little

sort of extra careful

now that little swerve is enough

to make a connection with me with his

car so i’m standing in the middle of

that road where he can’t see me and my

feet aren’t square

my right leg or right foot is slightly

in front of my left foot

so my my leg is that much further out

than just just comfortably standing but

my right leg is slightly out that little

swerve that he did to be careful of the

people on the left was enough to put the

front corner of his car into my right

leg that’s this much

stepped in front of my left leg and from

this moment onwards i have to tell the

story from what other people have told

me because i have zero memory because i

get

completely knocked out so the connection

happens and apparently i go flying

through the air i imagine maybe like

five to ten meters

in the in the direction that his car was

going i’m apparently also somersault

around and i imagine it was probably

just a 180 degree

kind of flip as i flip and fly through

the air i come down

and i face plant and i’m not sure if i

landed first on my face or the back of

my head but whichever one

landed first i then bounced and the

other side

smashed into the concrete so um

i end up lying on the floor with blood

pouring out of

my face and blood pouring out of the

back of my head

and that front right leg that took the

connection from the car

twisted at a really unnatural angle now

remember my class of

mostly girls who are all back on the

other side of the road

apparently they all come screaming and

running into the middle of the road

because they think they’ve just seen

one of their classmates one of their

friends die in front of their eyes

so and my cousin’s also in the class

i’ve got a cousin who was in the class

with me so that they’re screaming crying

running to my my possible dead body

one of my best friends was also out with

us that night he doesn’t scream or cry

he grabs his cell phone keeps us cool

and goes boom boom boom ambulance to

this location

someone’s just been hit by a car now

the next thing i’m going to explain is

there’s something called divine

intervention that the ancient greeks

believed in

like when one of their warriors couldn’t

be touched by any enemy

they would say the gods were looking

after him he had divine intervention

i think i had a little bit of divine

intervention on this evening

and i’m not sure if it was some form of

gods looking after me or good karma

coming back to me

but as i flew through the sky and landed

on the on my face

all of the cars screeched to a massive

halt

the first car coming from one direction

was a police officer and the first car

coming from the other direction was a

doctor

both of them off duty not working at

that moment so they got out of their

cars and the doctor started looking

after me and the police officer

started controlling the situation

so i was immediately in really good

hands eventually the ambulance came and

still i

i’m going to sleep i don’t remember any

of this the ambulance came and those

aimless people put me into a stretcher

and then to the ambulance and drove me

to

the hospital my cousin was allowed to go

in the ambulance with me so she’s there

and she

told me part of the story that i’m still

telling now apparently somewhere along

the drive i woke up

but i was in shock so i guess my brain

or my

my brain wasn’t letting my wasn’t

letting itself realize how bad the

injuries were

something like that because i woke up

and i was

convinced that i was fine and that i

didn’t need to go to the hospital and

they should just let me out of the

ambulance right now and probably being a

really annoying patient for them

i didn’t realize how bad i was i don’t

know that my face was completely smashed

and destroyed

or that um at this point my leg was in

really grave danger

um so apparently yeah i spent a lot of

time telling that i was fine and they

were

trying to look after me and put like

fluids into my body and

like strap me down to the stretcher and

i was apparently just being very

annoying

they got me to the emergency room and

throughout this time my mum and dad had

been called and they had

gone there as well and

still in shock i’m in the emergency room

strapped to a bed and i’m surrounded by

doctors and now there’s this moment of

clarity where my brain

i guess becomes more conscious and i

snap out of the shock

and i what i see from lying down on the

bed is that i’m completely surrounded by

doctors and nurses

i see my dad’s face on one side and he’s

looking pretty distraught like he

might be about to lose his only son and

my mom’s face on the other side and

she’s got a similar look to her face

except she’s

covered with tears crying and in this

like moment of conscious and coming out

of shock i just say mum what’s what’s

going on where am i what’s happening

and she tells me that i’m in hospital

i’ve been hit by a car

and i just need to calm down listen to

the doctors and do what they say

so i take a moment to mentally process

that and i also like mentally process my

body

and the doctors are all really concerned

about my neck they think that i could

have broken my neck as i’ve come down

and landed on the concrete on my face

and that would have been the most

dangerous thing and the first thing they

needed to

spend their attention on so a lot of the

doctors i’ve got this big

thing around my neck a lot of the

doctors are focusing on that and as i’m

working out my body and realizing what i

can feel i realize that i can’t feel my

right leg at all i can’t move it i can’t

feel it i don’t even know that it’s

there and i start freaking out

and i start yelling or not yelling to my

mum but saying to my mom mom

tell them my neck’s okay it’s my leg

tell them to tell them to look at my leg

because i was really worried they were

going to amputate my leg

so i’m freaking out saying all of this

kind of stuff tell them to look at my

leg and then just

[Music]

put this guy to sleep so we can actually

work on them and then they did what they

had to do and i wake up the next morning

in the hospital and apparently i was

allowed to

um to leave the hospital that day i had

to wait for swelling to come down

before i could go for an mri scan and

they could actually see

um what the real injuries were my face

was smashed up my

i was covered with cuts and scars and

things but the details of the injury of

my leg

they weren’t sure about i had a big

brace on it

and my dad was telling me this so we

were meant to leave but i was in

excruciating pain any time i tried to

move my leg i couldn’t move it by myself

i had to like

pick up my leg and just reposition

myself

and i tried to put it on the floor as if

i was going to walk but

there was no way i could put my weight

on the leg at all

so a doctor came back and now that i was

up and talking and being

out of shock and normal they were they

were like okay we need to see

mri scan right now which i went for and

we found out what the actual injuries

were

so the superficial stuff on my face um

my i must have landed on my chin here

and i’ve got a big scar

and at one point you could have put your

finger through a hole in my in my chin

here and it would have come out on the

inside of my mouth because

there was stitches all on the outside of

my arm face and on the inside of my

lips as well all of those teeth were

smashed up in the impact

just a little bit just a millimeter or

so the back of my head is covered with

scars so now when i shave the back of my

head you can see scars from from where i

bounced

and i had like scratches and bruises and

stuff but nothing nature however my

leg was the big one so that’s a

image of your knee and there’s four

ligaments inside your knee

the pcl and the acl the ones that are on

the bottom of the screen

they cross over at the front and quite

often sports players will do those

um and if a sports player does their acl

then they’re basically out for the

season they go and have surgery and they

might be able to come back and play

12 months later the lateral

is on the outside of your your knee and

it’s hardly never damaged because the

other needs you know generally protects

it from being bumped on the inside of

your knee

however my inside of my knee was where

it took the pump and the medial

um that one will heal itself sports

players will also do that one

and it will heal itself after like six

weeks of rest my media was fine the

other three were destroyed completely

and the doctors told me that this was

one of the worst knee injuries i’ve ever

seen and they didn’t know what was going

to happen after the surgery

and there was a good chance that i

wouldn’t be able to play sports again

which is a really

tough pill for me to be trying to

swallow they were going to need to

cut pieces of my hamstring another

muscle to replace the ligaments that

have been destroyed

so i went for a surgery they did all of

that i’ve got big scars on the side of

my knee where they had to cut out the

hamstring and little scars on the front

were there to do keyhole surgery

and then i had to go into recovery for a

very long time this was the toughest

part because

after having the accident and then

having the surgery it probably was like

an 18 month kind of recovery

initially the first three months i

couldn’t walk at all i had to have

crutches or a wheelchair

and that was really tough i had to move

out of the flat where i was living with

my friends and go back to living at home

so that i could kind of be looked after

a little bit by my parents

um i was still going to university

although i had to like cancel a whole

lot of assignments and things

but i was like spending my time in the

library going up and down staircases on

crutches so i got really strong arms

but my leg took a really long time to

recover the initial exercises were like

okay john can you wiggle your toes great

do that for 20 minutes

and then eventually moving to the point

where i would try and lift my leg like

this by myself but that was like months

later or like this by myself

after months of these little exercises

all day every day with physiotherapy

therapy

um probably around 12 months later maybe

six i can’t

remember exactly i was able to start um

trying to run sorry rewind after three

months i could get rid of the crutches

and being able to walk after not being

able to walk by yourself for so long

is a really proud feeling so walking

without crutches i was

that was a really great phase of the

recovery

and then maybe another six months later

i was finally able to run and then

finally able to put some weight and like

do weights to

grow back the muscles that are all

deteriorated after not using it

so it was a really long time of um yeah

of two things really

of hard work and optimism which are two

things i always try and live my life by

anyway

um and these are kind of this is the i

guess the the wrapping up the main point

of my

of my talk and very links to limitless i

guess the doctors were putting on these

limits of you may never play sport again

well they were saying like well you

might be able to go cycling and go

swimming but

there’s a chance you may never be able

to properly run again and in that moment

because i’ve

loved being a sportsman and running is

so key to that i made this little

kind of path to my head that i’m

definitely am going to run again

actually

so i don’t care what you say and in fact

i’m going to run a full marathon so i

made this

i added to my bucket list then i’m going

to run a full marathon after the

recovery of that

then an accident so yeah hard work and

optimism

got me to the point where i could tick

that off my bucket list eventually and

a few years later i did run a full

marathon i looked up i googled the

average time this week and it’s about

four hours for someone my age

so i ran out i was aiming for under

three and a half so i was really stoked

with that and you can see a couple other

photos there of

climbing mountains or going snowboarding

so i did get to a full recovery but it

was definitely

due to those two things and those two

things are my final link to

um being limitless or breaking through

limits if you are

um i don’t know trying to make a sports

team or train for a full marathon

or apply for university or apply for a

job i think if you work hard at whatever

it is

even if you’re just trying to ask a girl

out on a date if you work hard at

whatever it is and you’re an optimist

about

it and you believe that you can do it

and then you work hard enough to make

sure you can

give yourself the very best chance

you’re more than halfway there so those

are my two

main kind of things that i would say

keep those in mind if you’re trying to

break through some kind of limit of your

own

thank you very much for listening hope

you enjoy the rest of the day