LOS ANGELES (AP) – The worst day of Aaron Baker’s life wasn’t when the then-20-year-old professional motocross racer crashed his bike one spring day in 1999, flew over the handlebars and hit the ground head-first, paralyzing him from the next down.
No, the worst day came a year later when Baker’s physical therapy ended. That was when his therapists, marveling that he could actually stand on his own again and move his arms some, cautioned him not to expect much more.
The chances of walking again, he was told, were one in a million. He eventually used that as a mantra – when people say odds are a million to one, ignore the million and focus on the one – and has learned to walk again. It began with learning to do just one thing, beginning with getting just a few muscles in an arm to work and then moving on to another task.
“At first it was even one in a million that I would feed myself, so walking seemed out of the question,” said Baker, who recently completed a leg in the international Wings For Life run to raise awareness of spinal-cord research. “So after a time we learned to focus on just the one. Our approach to the whole process became just one breath, then one movement,” until small victories began to add up to the larger one.
Baker, who now gets around with just a cane, emphasizes he didn’t run far during his leg at last month’s event; maybe just a quarter mile. One of the poster children for the event, the 36-year-old was busy welcoming others, signing autographs and posing for photos.