Welcome to SCORE

Daily Bruin, June 1999
Head Above Ice (cont'd)
by Pauline Vu

In fact, both add, he even jokes about his situation. Vogel recalled the time he, Gjos and others were in a room, and someone said, "Maybe we should just walk right out of here."

"No, maybe I'll be rolling," Gjos quipped.

Just a few days ago Young picked up Gjos and greeted him with a friendly, "What's new?"

"Not much," Gjos replied jokingly. "I woke up this morning and still couldn't walk."

It is this lighthearted attitude and determination not to let the injury get the best of him that so impresses his friends.

"He attacks his situation with humor, makes people realize he's still the same guy - the same intellectual and funny guy," Vogel said. "He just happens to be doing it from a chair for now."

Still, Gjos says that there are times when he gets frustrated, mainly when he finds he can't do something as easily as he once did, or can't do something at all, like go dancing or running on the beach - "all kinds of things we just take for granted."

"Often when I wake up in the mornings, that's the hardest part, because you need to deal with reality all over again," Gjos said. "You tend to forget for a split second what's happened.

"Usually it doesn't take more than a minute or so to deal with that. Sometimes it takes a half-an-hour, but I get over it pretty quickly."

This hit upon his body - resulting in a fractured 11th thoracic vertebra - is by far the biggest challenge he has ever had to face.

"I don't think the doctors gave him a lot of hope," Young said. "Statistically speaking, he's not going to walk again."

But that's just statistically speaking.

"I've stopped asking for percentages because I have a pretty good idea of what it'll take to walk again," Gjos said.

"Whether they tell me the percentages are now 10 percent or whether they're 50 percent, it doesn't matter. I'm just going to keep working my rehab to get where I think I'll end up."

According to Young, Gjos sees his paraplegia as temporary.

"He's going to overcome it," he said.

Meanwhile, Gjos is striving to prove his independence, ordering a new bike with hand pedals and leasing his own car with hand controls.

"(This is) for if I go anywhere where I need to drive," he said. "Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be truly independent." Next Page

-------------------------------------