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SPEAKER_03: TED Radio Hour with NPR. Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode. I wake up in a hospital bed and I'm surrounded by doctors.
SPEAKER_00:
Everything is hazy. I've been in and out of consciousness for over a week. The
doctors are telling me that I have a bad infection in my leg. They say that
they've operated eight times already. They say that at one point my fever
spiked and my immune system started attacking my body. I went septic and
almost died. And then one of the doctors says this, as we speak flesh-eating
bacteria is crawling up your leg. It's getting closer to your vital organs
every minute. Good morning to you too doctor. Let me back up. I'm a
professional football player. I played quarterback and two weeks earlier two
defenders, almost 500 pounds of muscle, crushed me at the same time. It sounds
scary but honestly it's pretty normal in my line of work. This time though my
leg was bending where it shouldn't. I had what they call a compound spiral
fracture, which means that my leg was twisted and snapped diagonally, kind of
like a corkscrew. And yes it's as painful as it sounds. I knew right there on the
field that my season was done. What took me a little longer to figure out was
that my life was about to change forever. Two years after that gruesome
injury I actually ran back out onto that field and led my team to the playoffs.
But what I want to talk about today isn't some rousing comeback story where the crowd chants my name. I want to talk about the stuff that happens out of you.
The stuff that athletes like me don't want to discuss because we think it
makes us look weak. I want to talk about fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. Because if I
wanted to really fully recover from my injury I didn't just need to learn to
walk and run again. I also needed something to run towards, something to
live for. After that first hazy conversation, in order to save my leg the
doctors actually removed part of my good thigh and reattached it to my busted up
leg. Now they didn't know if the muscle would take so after the surgery every
hour the doctors and nurses would come in, unwrap the wound, apply a gel, and
search for a heartbeat in the muscle. Every time I would make him put up this
big white sheet to block my vision because from what I could tell it wasn't
a pretty sight. My leg was essentially a giant open wound. When the doctors and
nurses were back there my wife would be back there with them trying to cheer me
up. It looks so good. Babe it's so cool. There was no way she was going to get me
to look down there. The truth is I couldn't bear to. Not because I couldn't
stomach it, but because I couldn't accept what had happened to me. This went on for
months. At the time I was wheelchair bound. At home my wife had to be there
for me every second of the day even helping me to go to the bathroom. I spent
most of my days sitting propped up on the couch just thinking was I ever gonna
walk again, play catch with my kids again, wrestle with them on the living room
floor. All this for a stupid meaningless game. To that point my life had been so
big, so full of possibility, but now it all seemed to be spiraling down like
that fracture in my leg. And I'll be honest this wasn't the first time that
my mind had been twisted up like that. Let me tell you how my career started. I
was this nothing college recruit, but in my last two years of school I played
pretty well and somehow catapulted up to be the first pick in the NFL Draft. Over
the course of a couple months I went from a guy most people hadn't even heard of to the next great quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers. Joe Montana, Steve
Young, me. I was a 20 year old kid at the time and I didn't handle that pressure
well. I got really really anxious. Do I really belong here? How long until they
find out I'm a fraud? The questions paralyzed me. I was absolutely terrified
to make mistakes and I was desperate for others validation. It followed me around
24-7. I got to where I couldn't eat before games. I constantly felt nauseous.
I'd be at the dinner table with my wife or some friends and I just I wasn't there.
To the outside world I was playing this game I loved. I'd achieved what millions
of kids grow up dreaming about, but in my mind I was sinking like a stone. It
stayed that way for the better part of five years. I'd have some success but
then I'd get injured or get a new coach and the cycle would start over again. And
then I got two key pieces of advice. The first came in the form of a guy named
Jim Harbaugh. He was my coach at the time. Now what's best about coach Harbaugh is
he simply does not care what other people think about him. He couldn't be
more comfortable in his pleated khakis and tucked in sweatshirt. Now coach
Harbaugh used to tell the team the same thing right before we would take the field on game day. He would say play as hard as you can, as fast as you can, for
as long as you can, and don't worry. Don't worry. It sounds simple and it is but I
guess I didn't really believe it was possible until it came from somebody that I trusted. Around the same time I had a teammate named Blake Costanzo.
Blake was a linebacker who was a little nuts. Before games he would run around
the locker room and he would get in everybody's face and he'd ask, are you
gonna live today? I'm gonna live today. Are you? At first I didn't get it but
then he started to win me over. He was a guy who approached the game in the exact
opposite way that I did. He was taking the challenge head-on. He was fully
present right in the moment, right in my face. Just live. These ideas were a
counterweight to all my doubts and wouldn't you know it, I started playing
better. Started having fun again and we started winning. For the rest of my
career I would talk to a small group of teammates before games and tell them
some form of the same thing. Just live. And even as I got traded twice and
replaced by a couple great young quarterbacks, I stuck with that ethic. But
when my leg got infected, I completely lost that perspective. You might as well
have taken that white sheet I was hiding behind and draped it over my face because I wasn't really living. And once again I needed somebody to help me snap
out of it. That spring I started rehabbing at a military facility called
the Center for the Intrepid because while my injury was unheard of for a
football player, it was eerily similar to that of our wounded warriors. Basically
my leg exploded like I stepped on an IED. Before I got down there I'd watched
hours and hours of videos of these double and triple amputees and a lot of
guys with injuries like mine who were going on to the Paralympics or rejoining
the Army Rangers or the Navy Seals. I was in awe of them. I wanted to be like them.
But one of my PTs, Johnny Owens, made sure I knew right away it wasn't going to be easy to get back on my feet. Literally. The first day I was down there I was
doing a balance exercise in my good leg and he just shoved me right in the chest.
Come on Alex. Then he shoved me again. Come on. You can do better than that. Then
he did something that changed my recovery completely. He handed me a
football. You see, after spending years and years of my life with a football in
my hands, I hadn't touched one for months since my injury. It was like reattaching
a lost limb. He told me to throw from one knee. I zipped one to him. A better kind
of spiral. From that point on, if you put a ball in my hands, I felt stronger. I did
my exercises better. I can't explain it, but I felt lighter. I felt alive. After
that first visit, I felt like I had permission to dream again. I thought
about getting back out onto the field. If I make it back, great. If I don't, who cares?
At least I was living for something. And that's the mentality that carried me
through my recovery. Through numerous setbacks, both physically and mentally,
I eventually got cleared by the doctors. I actually made the roster. And then, 693
days after my injury, I got the call to put on my helmet and take my first snap
in a game. Now, I wish I could tell you that the crowd went wild, but there was
basically nobody there because of COVID.
And still, running onto that field, I had so many mixed emotions. What a rush. But
to be honest, I was absolutely terrified. Practice was one thing, but a real game.
Was my leg going to hold up? I found out on the third snap when this huge
defender launched himself onto my back. I tried to take a few steps, but I went
down. It's still the most liberating feeling of my life, getting back up,
knowing that I'm okay. I'm proud that I made it back out onto the field, but I'm
more proud of what got me there. Not the physical journey, but the mental one.
I've learned that so much of the anxiety that holds us back in life, it's
self-inflicted. We make it worse on ourselves, and it's okay if we need
somebody to help us snap out of it. For me, that was my wife, a military guy, a
maniac linebacker, or an eccentric coach. They taught me that I had to see my
fears for what they are, and that's why looking back, I know that my recovery
didn't actually start when Johnny shoved me in the chest. First, I had to pull back
that white sheet. For weeks and weeks, I'd been hearing my wife tell me how great
it looked. She helped me get to that point. I was ready, and when I finally did
it, it looked way worse than I'd expected.
What I saw was not cool. It was grotesque, mangled, and deformed, all kinds of purple
and blue and red. But I saw my leg for what it was, and it was mine. This thing
that once represented everything I feared, everything I had lost, it's
probably the thing I'm most proud of in my life, outside of my wife and kids. So
yeah, I guess she was right. It is pretty cool. These scars, they're not just a
reminder of everything I've been through, but more so, everything that's in front
of me. They stare me in my face, challenging me to be myself, to help
others out of their own spirals when I can. Now, you might not have a leg that
looks like this, but I bet you've got some scars, and my hope for you is this.
Look at them. Own them. They're the best reminder you'll ever have that there's a
whole world out there, and we've got a whole lot of living left to do. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:
Bestselling author Naomi Klein was in the restroom when she heard two women
SPEAKER_04: complaining about her politics. She quickly realized they had confused her with another writer, Naomi Wolf. So I came out and said to those two women, you have
your Naomi's confused. Ideas about doppelgangers and our shadow selves.
That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
