and for me that was the Olympic dream,

that's what defined me, that was my bliss.

As a cross-country skier and a member of the Australian ski team

headed toward the Winter Olympics,

I was on a training bike ride with my fellow teammates.

As we made our way up towards the spectacular Blue Mountains west of Sydney

it was the perfect autumn day:

sunshine, the smell of eucalypt, and a dream.

Life was good.

We'd been on our bikes around five and a half hours

when we got to the part of the ride that I loved,

and that was the hills, because I loved the hills.

And I got up off the seat of my bike

and I started pumping my legs and as I sucked in the cold

mountain air, I could feel it burning my lungs

and I looked up to see the sun shining in my face

and then everything went black.

Where was I?

What was happening?

My body was consumed by pain.

I'd been hit by a speeding utility truck

with only 10 minutes to go on the bike ride.

I was airlifted from the scene of the accident

by a rescue helicopter to a large spinal unit in Sydney.

I had extensive and life threatening injuries.

I'd broken my neck and my back in six places.

I broke five ribs on my left side, I broke my right arm,

I broke my collarbone, I broke some bones in my feet.

My whole right side was ripped open filled with gravel.

My head was cut open across the front,

lifted back, exposing the skull underneath.

I had head injuries, I had internal injuries, I had massive blood loss.

In fact, I lost about 5 liters of blood

which is all someone my size would actually hold.

By the time the helicopter arrived to Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney,

my blood pressure was forty over nothing.

I was having a really bad day.

(Laughter)

For over 10 days, I drifted between two dimensions.

I had an awareness of being in my body,

but also being out of my body

somewhere else watching from above,

as if it was happening to someone else.

Why would I want to go back to a body that was so broken?

But this voice kept calling me, "Come on, stay with me."

"No, it's too hard."

"Come on, this is our opportunity."

"No! That body is broken. It can no longer serve me!"

"Come on, stay with me. We can do it! We can do it together."

I was at a crossroads.

I knew if I didn't return to my body, I'd have to leave this world forever.

It was the fight of my life.

After 10 days, I made the decision to return to my body,

and the internal bleeding stopped.

The next concern was weather I would walk again

because I was paralyzed from the waist down.

They said to my parents, the neck break was a stable fracture,

but the back was completely crushed.

The vertebra at L1 was like you'd dropped a peanut,

stepped on it, and smashed it into thousands of pieces.

They'd have to operate.

They went in, they put me on a bean bag,

they cut me, literally cut me in half.

I have a scar that wraps around my entire body.

They picked as much broken bone as they could

that had lodged in my spinal cord.

They took out two of my broken ribs, and they rebuilt my back, L1. They rebuilt it.

They took out another broken rib.

They fused T12, L1, and L2 together, then they stitched me up.

They took an entire hour to stitch me up.

I woke up in intensive care

and the doctors were really excited that the operation had been a success

because at that stage, I had a little bit of movement in one of my big toes

and I thought, "Great! 'Coz I'm going to the Olympics!"

(Laughter)

I had no idea. That's the sort of thing that happens to someone else! Not me, surely.

But then the doctor came over to me and she said

"Janine, the operation was a success,

and we've picked as much bone out of your spinal cord as we could,

but the damage is permanent."

The central nervous system nerves, there is no cure.

You're what we call a partial paraplegic

and you'll have all of the injuries that go along with that.

You have no feeling from the waist down

and at most you might get 10 or 20% return.

You'll have internal injures for the rest of your life.

You'll have to use a catheter for the rest of your life

and if you walk again, it will be with calipers and a walking frame."

And then she said, "Janine, you'll have to rethink everything you do in your life

because you're never going to be able to do the things you did before."

I tried to grasp what she was saying.

I was an athlete. That's all I knew, that's all I'd done,

if I couldn't do that, then what could I do?

And the question I asked myself is: if I couldn't do that, then who was I?

They moved me from intensive care to acute spinal.

I was lying on a thin, hard spinal bed. I had no movement in my legs.

I had tight stocking on to protect from blood clots.

I had one arm in plaster, one arm tied down by drips.

I had a neck brace and sand bags on either side of my head,

and I saw my world through a mirror

that was suspended above my head.

I shared the ward with five other people

and the amazing thing is that because we were all lying paralyzed in the spinal ward

we didn't know what each other looked like.

How amazing is that?

How often in life do you get to make friendships judgement free,

purely based on spirit?

And there no superficial conversations,

as we shared our innermost thoughts, our fears,

and our hopes for life after the spinal ward.

I remember one night, one of the nurses came in, Jonathan,

with a whole lot of plastic straws.

He put a pile on top of each of us, and he said,

"Start threading them together."

Well, there wasn't much else to do in the spinal ward, so we did.

And when we'd finished, he went around silently

and he joined all of the straws up

till it looped around the whole ward

and then he said, "Okay everybody, hold on to your straws."

And we did.

And he said, "Right. Now we are all connected."

And as we held on and we breathed as one,

we knew we weren't on this journey alone.

And even lying paralyzed in the spinal ward,

there were moments of incredible depth

and richness, of authenticity and connection,

that I had never experienced before.

And each of us knew that when we left the spinal ward,

we would never be the same.

After six months, it was time to go home.

I remember dad pushing me outside in my wheelchair

wrapped in a plaster body cast

and feeling the sun on my face for the first time.

I soaked it up and I thought, "How could I ever have taken this for granted?"

I felt so incredibly grateful for my life.

But before I left hospital, the head nurse had said to me,

"Janine, I want you to be ready because when you get home something is going to happen."

And I said, "What?"

She said, "You're going to get depressed."

And I said, "Not me, not 'Janine the machine'"

which was my nickname.

She said "You are. Because, see, it happens to everyone.

In the spinal ward, that's normal.

You're in a wheelchair, that's normal.

But you're going to get home and realize how different life is."

And I got home, and something happened.

I realized Sister Sam was right.

I did get depressed.

I was in my wheelchair, I had no feeling from the waist down,

attached to a catheter bottle, I couldn't walk.

I'd lost so much weight in hospital, I now weighed about 80 pounds.

And I wanted to give up.

All I wanted to do was put my running shoes on and run out the door.

I wanted my old life back. I wanted my body back.

And I could remember Mum sitting on the end of my

bed and saying, "I wonder if life will ever be good again?"

And I thought, "How could it? Because I've lost everything that I valued,

everything that I'd worked towards... gone."

And the question I asked was: Why me? Why me?

And then I remembered my friends that were still

in the spinal ward. Particularly Maria.

Maria was in a car accident and she woke up

on her 16th birthday to the news that she was

a complete quadriplegic, had no movement from

the neck down, had damage to her vocal cords

and she couldn't talk.

They told me, "We are going to move you next to her because we think it will be good to her."

I was worried. I didn't know how I'd react being next to her.

I knew it would be challenging, but it was actually

a blessing because Maria always smiled.

She was always happy, and even when she began to talk again,

albeit difficult to understand,

she never complained. Not once.

And I wondered how had she ever found that level of acceptance?

And I realized that this wasn't just my life.

It was life itself.

I realized that this wasn't just my pain, it was everybody's pain.

And then I knew, just like before, that I had a choice.

I could keep fighting this or I could let go and accept

not only my body, but the circumstances of my life.

And then I stopped asking "Why me?"

and I started to ask "Why not me?"

And then I thought to myself maybe being at

rock bottom is actually the perfect place to start.

I had never before thought of myself as a creative person.

I was an athlete, my body was a machine.

But now, I was about to embark on the most creative

project any of us could ever do.

That of rebuilding a life.

And even though I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do,

in that uncertainty, came a sense of freedom.

I was no longer tied to a set path.

I was free to explore life's infinite possibilities.

And that realization was about to change my life.

Sitting at home, in my wheelchair and my plaster body cast,

an airplane flew overhead

and I looked up and I thought to myself:

"That's it! If I can't walk, then I might as well fly."

I said, "Mum, I'm going to learn how to fly!"

She said, "That's nice, dear."

(Laughter)

I said, "Pass me the yellow pages." She passed me

the phone book, I rang up the flying school,

I made a booking, said "I'd like to make a booking to come out for a flight."

They said, "When do you want to come out?"

I said, "Well I have to get a friend to drive me out

cus I can't drive, haha, sort of can't walk either, ha.

Is that a problem?"

I made a booking, and weeks later my friend Chris

and my mom drove me out to the airport.

All 80 pounds of me, covered

in a plaster body cast and a baggy pair of overalls.

I can tell you I did not look like the ideal candidate

to get a pilot's license.

(Laughter)

I'm holding onto the counter 'cause I can't stand.

I said, "Hi! I'm here for a flying lesson."

And they took one look and ran out the back to draw short straws.

"You get her!"

"No, no! You take her!"

Finally this guy comes out, "Hi! I'm Andrew and I'm going to take you flying."

I go, "Great!"

So they drive me down. They get me out on the tarmac,

and there was this red, white, and blue airplane.

It was beautiful!

They lifted me into the cockpit.

They had to slide me up on the wing, put me in

the cockpit. They sat me down.