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