Josh Sundquist - Just Dont Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness
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- Book:Just Dont Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness
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Just Dont Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness: summary, description and annotation
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One moment Josh Sundquist was your typical energetic and inquisitive nine year- old boy. The next, his entire life changed when he was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a particularly virulent cancer strain that would eventually claim Joshs left leg. Told in a wide-eyed, winning, heartbreaking voice, Just Dont Fall is the story of the boy Josh was and of the young man he became. His story begins in a small, close-knit Southern town, where his father-an aspiring pastor questioning his faith, and his mother homeschooling an ever- growing brood of children-struggle to make ends meet. Josh journeys through a dizzying array of hospitals and eventually lands at a pivotal place: the nearby mountain, where he makes his first attempt to ski.
It is on the slopes, and later, on the race course, that Joshs world bursts wide open in a way no one could have ever anticipated. The inspiration to ski, however, and to become a champion, is not all that Josh has to contend with- there is adolescence to navigate, the transition from homeschool to public high school, and girls. There is an increasingly turbulent and difficult home life, with another cancer scare, a wayward brother, and dwindling finances to pay for training. Finally, there is the wild, bumpy road to the Paralympics in Turin, with a misanthropic coach, training in the Rockies, and a timeless friendship with a charismatic, imposing Brooklyn homeboy named Ralph.
Through it all, Josh is forced to question his abilities, his sanity, his will, his faith in himself, and his faith in God. Because of, not despite, these myriad obstacles in his path, Josh is able to achieve a genuine grace: the grace to risk failure and to succeed. It is the grace of a young boy becoming a man and of a champion realizing his greatest dream. Josh Sundquist shows us with charm, humility and remarkable strength that even if we fall, this inner grace can lift us up and carry us over the many mountains we all must face.
One moment Josh Sundquist was your typical energetic and inquisitive nine year- old boy. The next, his entire life changed when he was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a particularly virulent cancer strain that would eventually claim Joshs left leg. Told in a wide-eyed, winning, heartbreaking voice, Just Dont Fall is the story of the boy Josh was and of the young man he became. His story begins in a small, close-knit Southern town, where his father-an aspiring pastor questioning his faith, and his mother homeschooling an ever- growing brood of children-struggle to make ends meet. Josh journeys through a dizzying array of hospitals and eventually lands at a pivotal place: the nearby mountain, where he makes his first attempt to ski.
It is on the slopes, and later, on the race course, that Joshs world bursts wide open in a way no one could have ever anticipated. The inspiration to ski, however, and to become a champion, is not all that Josh has to contend with- there is adolescence to navigate, the transition from homeschool to public high school, and girls. There is an increasingly turbulent and difficult home life, with another cancer scare, a wayward brother, and dwindling finances to pay for training. Finally, there is the wild, bumpy road to the Paralympics in Turin, with a misanthropic coach, training in the Rockies, and a timeless friendship with a charismatic, imposing Brooklyn homeboy named Ralph.
Through it all, Josh is forced to question his abilities, his sanity, his will, his faith in himself, and his faith in God. Because of, not despite, these myriad obstacles in his path, Josh is able to achieve a genuine grace: the grace to risk failure and to succeed. It is the grace of a young boy becoming a man and of a champion realizing his greatest dream. Josh Sundquist shows us with charm, humility and remarkable strength that even if we fall, this inner grace can lift us up and carry us over the many mountains we all must face.
Josh Sundquist: author's other books
Who wrote Just Dont Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Josh Groban
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Josh Thirion
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Josh Sundquist
Bobley Josh
Thirion
Sherri Mabry Gordon
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Barry Lyga
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Table of Contents
To my parents
Editors Note
These are true stories.
Memoirs, based as they are on memories, are inherently skewed by point of view. That being said, the author of this work has attempted to adhere to the truth of his memories as best he can.
Most dialogue, of course, has been reconstructed, but the author has interviewed many of the people who were present at key moments. In some cases the author has condensed chronology and dialogue for the sake of narrative pacing.
The physical therapist glues two stickers to my back, to the lower part of my back right above my underwear. There are wires coming out of these stickers, wires that will give me an electric shocknot the kind that electrocutes and kills people, no, dont worry, she says, this is a tiny shock I will barely feel. And this tiny electric shock will send a message to my brain that will block the pain from the thousands of tiny needles that are still stabbing my left foot, even now after the doctor gave me as much morphine as a nine-year-old can get at one time.
But when the physical therapist turns the knob, the stickers with the wires coming out start burning holes through my skin, and my body is bouncing up and down and side to side on the bed. I try to stop bouncing, because you are not supposed to bounce on beds, especially hospital beds. But I cant stop. My body is bouncing... automatically, the way my knee does when Dr. Marsh hits it with the orange triangle-shaped hammer. Thats how I feel now, except my whole body feels like it has been hit with the hammer, and its a big, heavy hammer like an orange triangle-shaped sledgehammer, so its not just my knee but also my head, shoulders, elbows, belly button and everything else in my body that is bouncing on the bed. And I cant hear anything, either, because it sounds like there are bees stuck in both of my ears that are buzzing so loudly they are shaking my brain.
Then the physical therapist presses a button and there is no more burning or bouncing or buzzing. She says that oh, shes so, so sorry and she accidentally started with level fifteen instead of level zero, which happened because she had the knob turned all the way to the right instead of the left, and now she will try again starting at zero and turn it up, very, very slowly. But I tell her I dont want to get shocked by the stickers anymore because instead of stopping the needles from stabbing my foot, the stickers made me bounce up and down and put a buzzing noise in my head and almost burned holes through my skin, and all this hurts even more than the needles.
Well then, the physical therapist says, she has one last idea that might help. The nerves that go to your right foot and the nerves that go to your left foot are connected in your spinal cord, she tells me, so your brain doesnt always know which foot is which. I say that I can always tell my right from my left, but she says this is different, and sometimes if one foot hurts and the other one gets a foot rub, the two signals cancel each other out. She says she will try rubbing my foot for me, but I say no thank you, I dont really want her to touch me right now.
So Mom sits on the end of my bed and puts my right foot in her lap. She starts by rubbing my toes. Her hands are cold. I shiver. But after she rubs my foot for a few minutes, her hands start to feel warm like the heating pad I used to put on my left leg. She rubs my toes and then moves up to the middle where the arch is and then down to my heel, kneading my foot like pizza dough, the kind with the dark brown whole wheat crust and spinach on top that she always makesthe kind that tastes terrible. We always ask her to make pizza with white crust and pepperonis because we dont mind about eating lots of fat and cholesterol and having heart attacks when we grow up, but she still makes her whole wheat crust and spinach-on-top pizza every week.
And today, in the hospital, when she rubs my foot like the whole wheat pizza dough, the needles stabbing my invisible foot start to disappear. First there are a thousand needles, then only a hundred, then just one or two, and then, for the first time since my leg was cut off, I have no pain at all. I fall asleep.
Dad is making up a number for me. Hes an accountant, so I know hes good at anything to do with numbers, especially making them up.
I asked him for the numberwhispered, actually, since we are in churchbecause of the family sitting in the front row. We are right behind them, in the second row. Its where we always sit.
Sitting in the second row means almost everyone can see you. Last year, when Dad decided he wanted to raise his hands in the air during the singing like they do at Pentecostal churches, he asked Pastor Smuland if it would be all right, even though we are a Presbyterian church, and even though our family sits in the second row, which means the whole congregation would see him do it.
Go for it, Pastor Smuland said.
It was the same answer Pastor Smuland gave him a few months ago when Dad asked if it was all right to bring a tambourine to church and play it from the second row. Go for it. So that next Sunday, Dad brought the tambourine I got for my birthday this year when I turned six. But he kept hitting it on the wrong beats and the piano player would tilt her head around the side of the piano and frown at him. So during the prayer I whispered to Dad that he should probably think about not going for it anymore with the tambourine.
In the front row is the Jacobson family. The Jacobsonswho are what we call a little bit different (actually, they are weird, but Mom doesnt let us call people weird unless they are liberals or feminists)always sit there, right in front of us. The Jacobsons are a little bit different because, for one thing, they grind their own wheat flour, which they do because they say it is more biblical to eat bread made with stone-ground flour since it contains all the germ and gluten God intended when he created the wheat kernel. They tried to sell us some of their biblical wheat bread, but Mom only buys bread when it is on sale after it has passed its expiration date.
The Jacobsons are the reason I asked Dad to guess the number. Actually, Mrs. Jacobson is. She wrote an article in the church newsletter last month about the Dangerous Levels of Sugar in Soft Drinks. Mrs. Jacobson wanted to share something with the congregation that God had put on her heart and He just really wanted everyone to know about, which was the fact that sugar levels in soft drinks are so high that if you drink one can of Coca-Cola, one third of your immune system shuts down.
Mom made me read the article.
See, thats why we dont eat sugar in our family, she said.
But I told her I knew the article was wrong, because some of my friends parents have let them drink three cans of soda, and according to Mrs. Jacobson that would have shut down their whole entire immune system.
But none of my friends have died, I said.
She frowned.
Right? I said.
Mom looked at Dad, because this was a numbers question and he is an accountant.
Its possible that the effect of the sugar is nonlinear, Dad said.
I knew that I was supposed to ask what nonlinear was, but then I would have to listen to one of Dads math lessons.
Oh, I said.
God had also wanted Mrs. Jacobson to tell the congregation that cancer tumors are fueled by carbohydrates, and carbohydrates come from sugar, so sugar causes cancer. Thats the part of the article I thought about when I saw the Jacobsons sitting on the front row today, and thats why I just asked Dad for the number:
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