Twenty-six years after a bicycle accident left her comatose for eight weeks and with permanent brain injuries, 52 year-old Barbara Buchan, the oldest member of the United States Paralympic team, this week won a gold medal and set the world record for her disability class in the individual 3,000-meter cycling competition in Beijing.
An amazing accomplishment from someone who has lived without a quarter of her left-temporal brain and serious physical and cognitive problems since her accident in 1982 when she was competing for a spot on the U.S. cycling team but was injured in a road-race crash that crushed her skull.
After many operations, she started cycling again. Her mother remembers, ”When they said she couldn’t do something, she would do it.”
In an interview that appeared in The New York Times Sept. 11 (”From Death’s Door to Medal Stand” by Alan Schwarz), Buchan said of her disability, ”You can be very upset at the world and have everyone take care of you or get back on your feet again.”
Buchan serves as a beacon of light and inspiration to each of us as we try to overcome the problems in our own lives which sometimes seem to overwhelm us. Each of us at some time feels disabled in some way, whether it is experiencing physical illness that we have to cope with or dealing with a lack of confidence or even fear that threaten to hold us back in achieving our dreams.
Can you write about your own efforts or those of someone you know to deal with a disability and yet live a rich life. Is there something in your own life that you have been able to achieve even though at first you thought this might be impossible? Or, is there a goal that you have and plan to work hard to reach?
Please share your thoughts and stories with us.

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