Charles Upshaw - Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps, and Me

 

Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps and Chuck Upshaw. Jesse Owens ran so fast that in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he wiped that smirk right off of Adolf Hitler's face. Michael Phelps, for the past 10 years, has been the fastest man in the pool. Now, those of you who are pretty perceptive and who've been paying attention have probably realized by now that I'm in a wheelchair. [audience laughter] And I've been using a wheelchair since 1987. So, I know some of you are thinking “There can't possibly be much in common between Chuck and those Olympians.” 

 

Well, it started the day that my neurologist told me about a new medication for MS Patients. A miracle drug, really. It was supposed to help MS patients walk 20% faster and he asked me if I'd be willing to try it. “20% faster? Hell, yes. Sign me up right now. What do I have to do?” He said the only thing I had to do was complete a 25-foot timed walk. Well, I understood what they were trying to do. They were going to establish a baseline. They were going to see how fast I walked before the meds and after the meds. “25 feet, I can do that in my sleep. 25 feet doesn't sound very far. It's the distance from here over there.” Most of you could probably walk 25 feet in six or seven seconds. It's not far. Unless you have multiple sclerosis, then it feels like you're walking across the Sahara Desert and that's how it turned out for me. 

Late one Friday afternoon in July, I took my walker to neurologist office and started to walk. The first two steps were great. I was strong. I was strong like a bull. That third step started to get a little harder and it got progressively harder the further I walked. By the time I finished, I was out of breath [panting] and I was soaked through with sweat. My shirt was just wringing wet. And I asked the nurse how I did? And she told me-- and I said, “Well, when can I start the medication?” She said, “Chuck, you can't.” And this was the part that the neurologist had neglected to tell me. I had to walk 25 feet within a certain time period. And the time I walked was way, way, way slower than that. 

 

Well, this was one of those WTF moments. [audience laughter] And I'll admit that I was probably using some of those ugly words. A timeframe? it would have been nice if somebody had told me, but nobody did. At that point, I was furious. But I made a decision that I was going to show the insurance companies because they are the ones who set the timeframe, the insurance companies, the man. I was going to show them. The next day I was going on vacation. And while I was on vacation, I walked 25 feet twice a day in the cool of the morning and the cool of the afternoon. And by the end of the week, I had knocked off 30 seconds. But that was still a long, long, long way from where I needed to be. When I got home, I wanted to continue walking, but I didn't have a place to walk. And for two or three weeks I thought of, “Where can I walk? Where can I walk?” And it finally came to me. I had been a mental health therapist on the psychiatric unit of a local hospital, and they had a great long hallway and I would walk there. The only problem was I didn't want anybody to see me walking. It was a pride thing, and I didn't want people to see me struggling and stumbling around, so I devised this great plan. I would only walk when patients were in treatment groups or at lunch and when staff were charting in the nurse's station. Well, that was a clumsy, slow, awkward way to do it and my times weren't coming down. So finally, I decided that I only had one solution, I would come out. 

 

So, one Monday morning in community meeting, that's when all the patients, the staff got together. I let people know what I was going to be doing, walk in the halls, and I let them know why. I needed to walk 45-- excuse me, I needed to walk 25 feet in 45 to 8 seconds. Afterwards, two women came up to me and said they would like to help me, two patients. Linda said, “Chuck, what can I do to help?” Well, I don't ask for help very well, so I didn't have any kind of plan. Finally, I said, “Take my watch. Walk down there to where you see that strip of tape on the floor. That's 25 feet. I will walk to you. I'll say go when I start walking and when I get to you, you stop timing me.” Mary said she wanted to help, too, but I didn't have anything for her to do. Now, Mary was a sister from Mississippi. So, I said, Mary, “Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go down there and stand next to Linda. I will walk to you. And we maintain good eye contact. And I want you to be my cheerleader.” I said, “Mary, I want you to pray for me.” She said, “Chuck, I'll do that.” 

 

So, we walked for a week, nothing. Two weeks, nothing. Finally, that third week, when I got to the finish line, Linda said, “Chuck, 44 seconds.” And Mary said, “Thank you, Jesus.” [audience laughter] And I learned two important things that day. One was how humbling it is to have people, who have their own problems and struggles, help you. The second thing I learned was how addictive speed can be [audience laughter] because even though I had gotten within the timeframe, I wanted my speed, my time, to go down, down, down, down, and it did. I kept walking. Patients kept helping me.  

 

Now, at the same time we had on the unit, a young woman who had been there two weeks, and she had been completely mute the whole time she was there. She had not said one syllable. No one had heard her say “Boo.” I'm a pretty good therapist. I tried everything I knew how to do, and she wouldn't talk. One day before group therapy, she came into the group room with a legal pad and a pen and she wrote, “Chuck, why is 30 seconds so important to you?” Well, I was stunned that she was communicating. But I told her, I told her about the medication. I told her about the time-frame. I told her that mostly 30 seconds was important to me because I wanted to stick it to the man. [audience laughter] She smiled, but she didn't talk. After about another week, her physicians thought that she should go to a longer-term hospital. On the day she left, her parents came to pick her up. They walked to the elevator. I rolled to the elevator and told her thank you and I wouldn't miss her. And as the elevator doors were closing, she looked up at me and said, “Chuck, I hope you get 30.” The doors closed. “Hey, wait, wait. Stop.” [audience laughter] But she was gone. Okay.

My times kept inching down slowly, but surely. And I did get 30 seconds and my time kept going down. These were my Olympic moments. It was about this time, I realized that 25 feet really isn't that far if you have people helping you. The last time I walked was three days before I retired. The young woman who was helping me, 19 and she had more attitude than all of you put together. [audience laughter] Okay, she started off the same way she did every time I walked. She said, “Ready, Chuck? Walk,” and I walked. I walked as fast as I could. When I got to the finish line, she didn't say anything. She looked up at me, but she didn't say anything. Finally, I said, “What's wrong?” She said, “Damn Chuck. I said walk, not run.” [cheers and applause] She got up, walked slowly over to me and showed me the stopwatch, 6.7 seconds. [cheers and applause] Life's a funny old thing. It's full of irony. The first time I walked, I didn't qualify because I was too slow. The last time I walked, I didn't qualify because I was too fast. [applause] Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps and me.