THREE QUARTERS, TWO DIMES, AND A NICKEL: A MEMOIR OF BECOMING WHOLE
Posted by admin | Posted in General Surgery | Posted on 24-09-2011
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Product Description
What would you do if you were seventeen years old and broke your neck? It’s tough enough to stand on the verge of adulthood without the extra burden of not being able to stand at all. Steve Fiffer had his whole life ahead of him in December 1967 when he fractured his fifth cervical vertebra in a wrestling accident at school, shattering his dreams. The diagnosis was quadriplegia, and his parents were told that he would never walk again. Steve, however, was not content to accept such a fate. He had always been taught that he was a leader, not a follower, and he was not going to take this news lying down. Within five months he was out of the hospital, within seven he was on crutches, and within nine he was beginning his freshman year at Yale University. And most remarkable of all, he never lost his wisecracking sense of humor or his hunger for all that life has to offer.
Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel is Steve Fiffer’s story of his coming of age, and of how he created a normal life for himself despite his injury. Steve refused to be consumed or defined by his physical condition; he may not be a dollar bill, he explains, but he’s still “three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel.” His battle to come back from his injury casts into sharp relief the drama of becoming an adult and wrestling with issues of identity, relationships, and ambition. We join him around the dinner table as he rebuilds his once-distant relationship with his father and gains a new appreciation of their bond; we agonize with him as he tries to find true love (or at least lose his virginity) despite his self-consciousness about his physical awkwardness, and we join him at the Lawson YMCA in downtown Chicago, where he rebuilds his body under the watchful eye of the manic physical-fitness coach Dick Woit, a retired football star who puts Steve through a sort of boot camp to raise his sights even higher and propel him off his crutches for good. Part guru, part drill instructor, Woit helps Steve to develop the mental toughness to put the injury behind him and to embrace adulthood and all its responsibilities.
By turns poignant, darkly comic, and ultimately triumphant, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel is an affirmation of how the ordinary joys of life can win out even in extraordinary circumstances.Amazon.com Review
Despite the fact that it opens with a paralyzing wrestling injury, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel by Steve Fiffer is one upbeat memoir. After exposing the reader to the numbing psychological aftershock of the injury he suffered at the age of 17–”The accident had fractured more than my fifth cervical vertebra, broken more than my neck. It had fractured reality, broken time”–the book quickly gives way to a sincere and sustained optimism, free of self-pity and sentimentality. The horrific event is effectively turned into a defining experience rather than the primary focus of the rest of his life. Just seven months after being told by doctors that he would never walk again, he manages to enter his first class at Yale University on crutches rather than in a wheelchair. That he would someday walk again seems less a dream than an inevitability: “I wasn’t supposed to walk again. I wanted to walk. So I did.” But there is much more to Fiffer’s coming-of-age tale than his efforts to retrain his legs. In poignant descriptions of personal awakenings, sexual stirrings (and frustrations), and the common desire for acceptance, “becoming whole” extends far beyond the task of dealing with a broken vertebra. He may not be a dollar bill, he explains, but “three quarters, two dimes, and nickel” add up to the same thing in the end.
Some of the book’s more colorful and moving passages feature Dick Woit, a former pro-football player who subsists entirely on Cool Whip and whom Fiffer enlists for some tough love. In the manic guru-cum-trainer’s first meeting with Fiffer, Woit refers to him as “Crip,” promptly instructs him to hit the deck and perform some sit-ups, then declares his effort, and current physical state, “pathetic.” Thus motivated, Fiffer begins regularly attending Coach Woit’s gym to battle for control of his legs and his life. His struggle to walk makes his story intriguing, even suspenseful, while his grappling with larger issues makes it universal and inspiring. Told with candor and plenty of humor, Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel beautifully defines the subtle differences between simply enduring an unimaginable twist of fate and actually making something good of it. –Shawn Carkonen
THREE QUARTERS, TWO DIMES, AND A NICKEL: A MEMOIR OF BECOMING WHOLE
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