Once-Disabled Surfer Is Riding High

At 17, Gary Clisby was “in the tube.” A top-ranked amateur surfer, the Huntington Beach high school honor student was also an award-winning artist. A member of the National Scholastic Surfing Assn., he had planned to compete in the World Surfing Championships held near his home in the summer of 1984.

That Memorial Day, Gary was driving through Malibu with a 15-year-old male companion en route to Ventura, where they were to participate in an another surfing contest. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a 20-year-old man, driving drunk, careened into their car, leaving an inexorable mark on Gary and his family.

The drunk driver died instantly.

Gary’s friend was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, where surgery was performed to repair severe internal injuries. He recovered and returned to school the following September.

Gary was airlifted by helicopter from the crash site and taken to UCLA Medical Center. Twice during the trip his breathing stopped; an on-board physician performed an emergency tracheotomy.

Once at UCLA, a medical team worked feverishly around the clock to surgically correct intestinal injuries and multiple fractures of Gary’s neck, legs and feet.

Twenty-seven facial fractures caused his head to swell to nearly three times its normal size. He remained in intensive care for nine days and spent five more weeks in the hospital. Two months of home nursing care was followed by a long course of physical therapy.

In the 72 hours following his accident, doctors said Gary had a slim chance for survival.

Six years later, he is the eighth-ranked amateur surfer in the United States.

“I didn’t believe (the doctors) when they told me I’d never walk again. And I knew I’d be surfing again. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind. I felt a tremendous sense of peace about it,” says Gary, now 24.

It is not the severity of an injury but how the individual perceives it that determines recovery, says Jerry Teixeira Ph.D., director of the clinical neuropsychology department at UCI Medical Center.

“I’ve seen patients view a minor burn on the finger as an entire body distortion, while others view a severe body distortion as a burn on the finger,” says Teixeira, who treats patients suffering brain- and head-related traumas and emotional disorders caused by accidents, strokes, sports-related injuries and burns. Coping skills and emotional support systems contribute significantly to recovery, says Teixeira.

The Clisbys are a close-knit family.

While Gary lay suspended between life and death, his mother, Carol, father, Mel, and two older sisters, Cheryl and Karen, took turns standing watch in the intensive care unit.

Doctors advised them that each passing hour increased Gary’s chances for staying alive.

“We had to take it hour by hour and minute by minute,” recalls Mel.

“We had always been very close, a traditional family,” says Carol. “But that closeness had never really been tested before.”

That test, she says, reaffirmed all she ever believed about the good in people. Relatives, friends, neighbors, business associates and members of their church visited the family.

“Fellow surfers who hadn’t even met our son heard about the accident and came to the hospital to give their support,” says Carol. “His jaw was wired shut, he couldn’t talk or eat, yet people came to the hospital just to sit with him, talk to him.”

The Clisby family acknowledges that medical expertise played a large part in Gary’s healing, but they are convinced that his positive outlook, strength and courage--and the family’s faith in God--played a pivotal role in his full recovery.

“Gary was always the kind of kid who went after what he wanted. He didn’t let anything stop him,” says Mel.

Teixeira agrees: “Thoughts are powerful. When people take responsibility for their own recovery, it puts them in the driver’s seat. If you are thinking that the world is ‘doing it to you,’ you are not going to feel as if you have much control over the outcome.”

“Attitude is the way you view yourself; perspective is the aspect through which you view a disability or illness,” says Allen Lawrence MD, co-founder of Neuro Diagnostic Testing Services in Fountain Valley. As medical director there, he oversees patient testing for nerve damage caused by illness and accidental injury. He became interested in the dynamics of healing 20 years ago during his residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Lawrence recently completed a book on healing and believes that attitude, perspective and action are essential to healing and wellness. He is convinced that the most important factor in healing is action. “The power that you give to the decisions that you make and the action that you take are crucial to recovery,” he says.

Complete recovery may not always be possible, says Lawrence, but “if the desire is great, people can overcome almost any limitation.”

He cites as examples armless people who throw baseballs with their feet and paraplegics who ride motorcycles.

Lawrence also believes that forgiveness helps heal. “Part of the action process is letting go of negative aspects and focusing entirely on the positive,” he says. “When patients are not mending properly, I look for repressed anger or an unwillingness to forgive themselves or another person.”

As soon as he was physically able, Gary contacted the father of the deceased drunk driver and told the man that he had forgiven his son. “I lost a lot, but he lost his son,” Gary says. “I wanted him to know I felt bad about what he was going through and I didn’t want him to blame himself for what happened to me.”

Next, Gary took responsibility for his illness. It would have been easy for him to hide behind distractions like television or pain killers, but he didn’t take the easy route. Doctors attempted to prepare him for not being able to walk again, but he refused to accept that fate.

To the amazement of his doctors, he took his first steps less than three months after the accident. Soon he was surfing again.

His sister Cheryl, 29, a physical therapist, “helped me every day with my therapy. She explained everything in detail so that I could understand what was necessary and why,” says Gary.

Gary’s sister Karen, 28, a sales division manager for Best Foods, once dismissed her contribution, thinking it was less than Cheryl’s. “People often think that you have to say or do something really major to help someone who is ill, but it isn’t so,” says Gary. “Karen was fantastic. She sat with me and just talked to me, kept me current, raised my spirits. When I could eat again, she brought me cookies she had baked.”

When someone is seriously ill, says Gary, “you don’t have to know all the answers. You don’t have to talk about the person’s disease. You only have to be there, treating them like a normal person. When you feel like a person and not an invalid, you get well faster.”

Annemarie Schwantes, one of Gary’s friends since junior high, visited him in the hospital. She brought with her photographs from their school days. “We became reacquainted. I visited him throughout his recovery, and when he came home, we started dating,” says Annemarie. “I learned firsthand what an incredible person he is. After all that had happened to him, I never saw any sign of bitterness. I knew then that someone very special was in my life.”

Gary and Annemarie were married last St. Patrick’s Day.

The newlyweds work for Billabong, a surf-wear manufacturer based in Costa Mesa. Annemarie is assistant controller, and Gary is an outside sales representative. He continues to compete in national and international surfing contests and is the North American distributor for Australian Surfing World magazine.

Larry Moore, photo editor at San Clemente-based Surfing magazine and a longtime friend of Gary, says he is not surprised that Gary Clisby made a complete recovery.

“He was fearless before the accident, and he’s fearless now,” says Moore. “I’ve seen him go for waves that terrify other surfers who are ranked much higher than him. But Gary will look at a 10-foot wave and say ‘No big deal. This is nothing compared to what I’ve been through.’ ”