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At the young age of 20, Dale slipped and fell from a railroad trestle, and in that moment, his life was dramatically changed. He spent two and a half months in the hospital and had to learn how to live life in a wheelchair.  Dale shares his journey and how his positive thinking led him to become a speaker and deliver the important message to Think First .

 
Dale Spencer


Dale lives in the western suburbs of Chicago. He is a mortgage broker and a key-note speaker in many topics. I asked him about his religious beliefs prior to the interview, to get an idea of how they may have changed.
He was brought up Catholic and went to church every Sunday. As a kid, you don't realize the full understanding of spirituality and faith. When it came to his injury it really put his faith to the test, as well as his family.

Near-Death Experience
It was December or 1988. Dale was with his friends from Northern Illinois University and it was the end of his first semester, junior year.

He had to take a break from studying and they went to a local party and went on foot. They decided to take a shortcut and had to go on railroad tracks.  A very unsafe place to begin with.

He was a 20-year-old guy, wasn't too worried, just thought they would be careful.  It was a poorly lit area, about 1 am, they were walking along the tracks, and came upon a railway trestle.

They walked across and were spread apart. Dale slipped on a railroad tie and fell about 4 stories into a river. It was only about a foot deep, and what may have saved him is the fact that he was conscious.



 

 
After Effects and Inside the Experience
Dale knew something was wrong. He opened his eyes and tried to process that one moment he was walking along the tracks, the next he was looking up at the trestle partly submerged in freezing cold water.

He jerked his back to move and had a tremendous and very acute and sharp pain going down his vertebrae, his legs were completely numb.

He couldn't move so he yelled out to his friends. He had no idea how far away they were. He kept screaming and screaming until they were able to follow his voice and find him. He didn't know if it was 5 minutes or an hour.

They knew not to move him and went to a nearby house and called an ambulance. The ambulance was there within minutes. They asked him some questions and knew he had a serious injury. They didn't want to cause further damage so they collared his neck, put a flat board underneath him, picked him up slowly, put him in the ambulance and took him to the local hospital.

They couldn't treat him at the local hospital, so they transferred him by helicopter to, North Western Memorial Hospital, downtown Chicago,  a level one trauma center.

On the way to the hospital, they checked his vitals and they were doing a skin poking test to see where he could feel. At that time, he thought that it was just a shock to his system, he thought he would get the feeling back in his legs.

He had a battery of tests, exams, and x-rays. It was conclusive that he had a spinal cord injury. It was horrific every moment he was awake, but it gave him clarity, exactly what happened to him every step of the process.

Dale believes the whole notion,  that things happen for a reason, and for the last 20 years, he has been talking to high school and middle school students about injury prevention. He takes them through the whole process of everything he went through every step of the way.

He was in the hospital for about 2 1/2 months. He had an operation right away. There are 3 sections of vertebrae that surround the spinal cord. He landed on his feet, and snapped his back forward and that t-12 sliced right into the spinal cord.

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