Hunting for a Miracle, Grasping at a Chance

Part I

John Pou (pronounced as in church pew) was a North Carolina boy through and through, a daredevil who spent his younger days hurtling over creeks on his motocross bike. On his first date with Marci, he pulled up in his old muscle car — a '78 Pontiac Trans Am. A friend warned that Marci might think him a redneck, but the girl who just happened to adore cars (and football) fell in love instead.

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(Photo: AP Images / Denis Poroy)

Marci Pou, right, holds hands with her husband John Pou as they watch other clients trying to walk during an open house at Project Walk in Carlsbad, Calif. Friday, Nov. 10, 2006.

In John, Marci saw something else entirely: a quiet strength that would become the backbone of their 13-year marriage.

"My angel," she liked to call him. "My knight in shining armor."

With her long blond hair and sweet smile, Marci looked more the girl-next-door than a tough-as-nails tomboy. Inside, she was a bit of both. A woman of strong faith and passion, she always wore a brave face through the worst storms, including her own battles with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

"Don't tell me I can't," she would say.

Together, John and Marci lived their lives by the Golden Rule, taught their kids to do the same. They were the kind of folks who wouldn't just lend a hand in times of trouble, but a bed, a hot meal, a hug and prayers.

Then came Aug. 22, 2005, and Chase sprinting across the sand to Marci at Topsail Beach, their annual family vacation spot on the North Carolina coast.

"Mommy! Mommy!" her 7-year-old said, "I think Daddy's dying."

Marci had taken their 5-year-old daughter Kacie back to the motel to change her bathing suit. Chase built sandcastles on the beach while John went for a swim.

Marci looked at her little boy. He shouldn't cry wolf, she said. But Chase was insistent.

"No, Mamma!" he said, firmly grabbing her arm.

Marci looked down the beach and saw John on his back on the sand. She ran.

"Help me," her husband mouthed, unable to speak.

John never lost consciousness. Not in that awful moment when he dived over a wave and felt his head hit the sand as though it were a stack of bricks. Not in the moments after, when his entire body went limp in the water and he feared he would drown while his son played on the beach behind him. Not when he finally floated to shore and saw his boy smiling overhead as if Daddy were kidding — smiling until John managed to mouth, "I need help."

When the paramedics arrived, they put him in a neck brace on a backboard and asked: Can you move this? Can you feel this?

He grasped immediately that he was paralyzed. And the one thing he knew was paralysis had no cure.

Marci knew, too. Words she'd barely uttered suddenly came to mind: Quadriplegic. Paraplegic. She didn't even know the difference between the two. She would quickly learn.

John had broken his neck when his head hit the sand, crushing the fifth cervical bone of the spinal column. Doctors believed part of the shattered bone cut into his spinal cord, leaving a lesion along the bundle of nerves that carries impulses to and from the brain and controls the body's motor and sensory function.

In that first two-hour surgery the morning of Aug. 22, surgeons rebuilt John's C-5 vertebra using bone from a donor bank, then screwed a titanium plate from his C-4 vertebra to the C-7 to keep the spinal column stable.

The next day, the doctor delivered the diagnosis the couple expected. Once the initial swelling subsided, John might regain some function, but there was no telling how much. Worst-case scenario: John would be paralyzed from the chest down, meaning quadriplegia, or loss of mobility in his legs and at least partial loss of his arms.

He was 36 years old and had been a 210-pound picture of health. He'd built his own barn on the five acres where they lived in Iron Station, outside of Charlotte. Now he couldn't even pick up a hammer or grasp a fishing pole.

Their life, their goals, had been simple: Marci, 39, was going to retire in eight years, John not long after that. They'd thought about starting their own business buying and fixing up homes.