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I'm actually going to share something with you

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I haven't talked about probably in more than 10 years.

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So bear with me

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as I take you through this journey.

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When I was 22 years old,

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I came home from work, put a leash on my dog

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and went for my usual run.

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I had no idea that at that moment

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my life was going to change forever.

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While I was preparing my dog for the run,

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a man was finishing drinking at a bar,

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picked up his car keys, got into a car

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and headed south,

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or wherever he was.

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I was running across the street,

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and the only thing that I actually remember

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is feeling like a grenade went off in my head.

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And I remember putting my hands on the ground

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and feeling my life's blood

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emptying out of my neck

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and my mouth.

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What had happened

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is he ran a red light and hit me and my dog.

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She ended up underneath the car.

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I flew out in front of the car,

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and then he ran over my legs.

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My left leg got caught up in the wheel well --

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spun it around.

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The bumper of the car hit my throat,

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slicing it open.

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I ended up with blunt chest trauma.

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Your aorta comes up behind your heart.

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It's your major artery, and it was severed,

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so my blood was gurgling out of my mouth.

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It foamed,

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and horrible things were happening to me.

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I had no idea what was going on,

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but strangers intervened,

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kept my heart moving, beating.

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I say moving because it was quivering

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and they were trying to put a beat back into it.

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Somebody was smart and put a Bic pen in my neck

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to open up my airway so that I could get some air in there.

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And my lung collapsed,

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so somebody cut me open and put a pin in there as well

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to stop that catastrophic event from happening.

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Somehow I ended up at the hospital.

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I was wrapped in ice

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and then eventually put into a drug-induced coma.

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18 months later I woke up.

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I was blind, I couldn't speak,

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and I couldn't walk.

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I was 64 lbs.

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The hospital really has no idea

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what to do with people like that.

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And in fact, they started to call me a Gomer.

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That's another story we won't even get into.

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I had so many surgeries to put my neck back together,

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to repair my heart a few times.

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Some things worked, some things didn't.

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I had lots of titanium put in me,

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cadaver bones

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to try to get my feet moving the right way.

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And I ended up with a plastic nose, porcelain teeth

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and all kinds of other things.

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But eventually I started to look human again.

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But it's hard sometimes to talk about these things,

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so bear with me.

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I had more than 50 surgeries.

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But who's counting?

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So eventually, the hospital decided

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it was time for me to go.

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They needed to open up space

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for somebody else that they thought could come back

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from whatever they were going through.

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Everybody lost faith in me being able to recover.

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So they basically put a map up on the wall, threw a dart,

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and it landed at a senior home here in Colorado.

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And I know all of you are scratching your head:

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"A senior citizens' home? What in the world are you going to do there?"

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But if you think about

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all of the skills and talent that are in this room right now,

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that's what a senior home has.

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So there were all these skills and talents

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that these seniors had.

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The one advantage that they had over most of you

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is wisdom,

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because they had a long life.

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And I needed that wisdom at that moment in my life.

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But imagine what it was like for them

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when I showed up at their doorstep?

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At that point, I had gained four pounds,

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so I was 68 lbs.

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I was bald.

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I was wearing hospital scrubs.

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And somebody donated tennis shoes for me.

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And I had a white cane in one hand

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and a suitcase full of medical records in another hand.

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And so the senior citizens realized

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that they needed to have an emergency meeting.

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(Laughter)

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So they pulled back and they were looking at each other,

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and they were going, "Okay, what skills do we have in this room?

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This kid needs a lot of work."

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So they eventually started

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matching their talents and skills

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to all of my needs.

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But one of the first things they needed to do

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was assess what I needed right away.

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I needed to figure out

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how to eat like a normal human being,

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since I'd been eating through a tube in my chest

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and through my veins.

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So I had to go through trying to eat again.

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And they went through that process.

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And then they had to figure out:

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"Well she needs furniture.

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She is sleeping in the corner of this apartment."

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So they went to their storage lockers

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and all gathered their extra furniture --

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gave me pots and pans, blankets,

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everything.

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And then the next thing that I needed

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was a makeover.

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So out went the green scrubs

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and in came the polyester and floral prints.

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(Laughter)

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We're not going to talk about the hairstyles that they tried to force on me

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once my hair grew back.

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But I did say no to the blue hair.

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(Laughter)

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So eventually what went on

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is they decided that, well I need to learn to speak.

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So you can't be an independent person

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if you're not able to speak and can't see.

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So they figured not being able to see is one thing,

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but they need to get me to talk.

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So while Sally, the office manager,

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was teaching me to speak in the day --

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it's hard, because when you're a kid,

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you take things for granted.

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You learn things unconsciously.

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But for me, I was an adult and it was embarrassing,

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and I had to learn how to coordinate

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my new throat with my tongue

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and my new teeth and my lips,

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and capture the air and get the word out.

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So I acted like a two-year-old

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and refused to work.

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But the men had a better idea.

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They were going to make it fun for me.

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So they were teaching me cuss word Scrabble at night,

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(Laughter)

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and then, secretly,

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how to swear like a sailor.

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So I'm going to just leave it to your imagination

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as to what my first words were

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when Sally finally got my confidence built.

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(Laughter)

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So I moved on from there.

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And a former teacher who happened to have Alzheimer's

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took on the task of teaching me to write.

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The redundancy was actually good for me.

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So we'll just keep moving on.

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(Laughter)

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One of the pivotal times for me

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was actually learning to cross a street again

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as a blind person.

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So close your eyes.

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Now imagine you have to cross a street.

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You don't know how far that street is

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and you don't know if you're going straight

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and you hear cars whizzing back and forth,

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and you had a horrible accident

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that landed you in this situation.

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So there were two obstacles I had to get through.

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One was post-traumatic stress disorder.

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And every time I approached the corner or the curb

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I would panic.

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And the second one

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was actually trying to figure out how to cross that street.

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So one of the seniors just came up to me,

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and she pushed me up to the corner and she said,

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"When you think it's time to go, just stick the cane out there.

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If it's hit, don't cross the street."

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(Laughter)

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Made perfect sense.

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But by the third cane

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that went whizzing across the road,

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they realized that they needed to put the resources together,

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and they raised funds

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so that I could go to the Braille Institute

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and actually gain the skills

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to be a blind person,

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and also to go get a guide dog

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who transformed my life.

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And I was able to return to college

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because of the senior citizens who invested in me,

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and also the guide dog and skill set I had gained.

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10 years later I gained my sight back.

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Not magically.

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I opted in for three surgeries,

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and one of them was experimental.

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It was actually robotic surgery.

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They removed a hematoma from behind my eye.

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The biggest change for me

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was that the world moved forward,

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that there were innovations

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and all kinds of new things --

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cellphones, laptops,

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all these things that I had never seen before.

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And as a blind person,

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your visual memory fades

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and is replaced with how you feel about things

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and how things sound

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and how things smell.

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So one day I was in my room

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and I saw this thing sitting in my room

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and I thought it was a monster.

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So I was walking around it.

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And I go, "I'm just going to touch it."

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And I touched it and I went,

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"Oh my God, it's a laundry basket."

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(Laughter)

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So everything is different

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when you're a sighted person

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because you take that for granted.

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But when you're blind,

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you have the tactile memory for things.

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The biggest change for me was looking down at my hands

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and seeing that I'd lost 10 years of my life.

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I thought that time had stood still for some reason

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and moved on for family and friends.

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But when I looked down,

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I realized that time marched on for me too

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and that I needed to get caught up,

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so I got going on it.

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We didn't have words like crowd-sourcing and radical collaboration

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when I had my accident.

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But the concept held true --

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people working with people to rebuild me;

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people working with people to re-educate me.

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I wouldn't be standing here today

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if it wasn't for extreme radical collaboration.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)