He put on his coat and his hat and he asked me to take him out to vote in the Illinois Primary Election. As we were driving to our polling place we listened to NPR, and on the radio in our cold car plowing through the snow we heard, “Brought to you by Medtronic, creating technology for athletes.” We both just looked at each other. Medtronic is the company that created the exact technology that was now housed in his spine and was making it possible for him to go out and vote!

I remember when his doctor at Northwestern listened to him recant his swimming goals and heard him say that he needed to retain his full range of motion and that he needed the quickest recovery. “I know just the device for you and in six weeks you’ll be able to do anything you wish.”

And so there we were. 30 hours after surgery driving to vote in an election where neither one of us knew too much about the candidates because we had been so consumed with all that was happening to him. In fact, when I turned in my ballot the white haired lady kind of yelled at me. “Honey, you left some blank.”

That’s when I knew. We had something of our lives back.